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First let me say that I agree completely with Diane,
about GSE and their sewer bill. But isn't the problem
about shutting them off, due to the fact it's a sewer
bill and not a water bill?
If I don't pay my water bill, a guy comes out in a
truck and turns the valve from the water main to the
street. Easily done. But as Diane says, GSE gets their
water from a well. Thus there is no connection from
the water to the plant, except what is on GSE land.
There is no valve to turn off, as I understand it,
just a sewer connection.
To cut GSE off, the St. Paul Regional Water Services
(SPRWS) literally would have to come out and dig up
the sewer pipe. Maybe I'm a little slow here, but I
think that's the difference.
Diane, am I missing something here?
Dan Dobson
Summit Hill - Saint Paul
"A Little Upstream of the Smell"
Thank You Councilman Coleman for Bringing Such a Fine
Plant into our Neighborhood. May This Be Remembered As
Your Legacy.
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 09:32:03 -0400
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [StPaul] More GSE
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Mary Z is correct that this is a problem, but I think
a little more perspective
on what's going on is in order.
The question is this:
How does one get a low-interest operating loan from
the City of St. Paul
as a profitable business privately owned by wealthy
individuals that is
routinely faced with claims that it violates state and
local pollution
laws and court orders while still pocketing a big fat
state subsidy check four
times a year?
One word: Ethanol.
In a manner that is likely to anger its last
half-dozen supporters left
on the planet, the Strib has discovered that Gopher
State Ethanol has
managed to avoid paying its sewer service bill to the
St. Paul Regional
Water Services (SPRWS) and has instead turned the
arrearages into a low
interest loan financed by St. Paul taxpayers.
This gets complicated, so bear with me. GSE doesn't
use City water -
they have their own well. But they use a great deal
of sewer capacity,
as ethanol production is a water intensive use. The
wastewater is
treated by the Met Council's Environmental Services
department, just
like all sewage in the metro area. But like most
water users, GSE pays
SPRWS its bill, and SPRWS pays the Met Council. If
GSE (like any other
user) doesn't pay, SPRWS has to front the money for
sewer services and
try to collect from its customer - usually the threat
of turning off the
water coming in is enough to move things along.
That's what recently
happened at the Skyline Tower Apartments recently: You
don't pay (or the
records show your manager didn't pay), you lose your
water.
But we're talking GSE here, so that doesn't happen.
GSE doesn't pay its
sewer bill, the City still has to pay the Met Council,
and the City then
has to try to collect by whatever means necessary.
GSE has somehow
managed to convince someone at SPRWS that its unpaid
bills shouldn't
result in service shutoff, they should instead be
rolled over as
unpaid assessments on their property taxes. As such,
foreclosure can't
take place immediately, the word from the County is
that GSE has until
sometime in late 2007 before foreclosure can take
place. The interest
rate on this de facto loan? About 5%. The amount of
unpaid sewer
assessments? On one parcel of land alone at the GSE
complex (Parcel No.
122823230112) the outstanding Sewer Assessment is
$688,520.35. There
are five or six parcels in the complex, but not all of
them have such
amounts due. Now, given that the total property tax
payable on the
complex is about $135,000 per year, this is a bit
larger than adding the
costs of mowing Arno Karner's lawn onto his property
tax bill.
The Strib story says they owe over $1 million in
past-due taxes and
assessments.
Moderate income housing complexes goof up and don't
pay their bill and
the water gets shut off, but GSE doesn't pay its bill
and gets rewarded
with a low-interest operating loan carried by the
taxpayers for years. And it
never even had to apply or go through all that
intrusive part of showing
anyone a balance sheet.
Inventive and creative? Yes. Surprising? No.
I understand that there is a proposal at the
legislature that would make
sure that local governmental units would have the
right to make claim on the
ethanol producer subsidy to satisfy back taxes due by
plants. Makes sense to
this taxpayer.
Diane Gerth
I really live in the West End.
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