Dollars and Sense
I’m a frugal sort of person. I like to find a good bargain at the store. I shop for the cheapest plane tickets, and I drive an economical car. However, when I’m investing for myself, or evaluating a potential investment for one of my customers, I always look for the companies that spend their money consistently in areas that will shore up the business for the long term.
I make sure there is a reasonable advertising budget. I look for maintenance contracts, and I check that licenses are paid up on time. All of these are signs of good stewardship of the company. Any company not having these things up to date will always have hidden costs that the business investors will now have to make up some how.
There are many similarities in a public works project. You have to plan for the long term, plan for the short term, and make sure that you have the revenue coming in to grow your systems.
There are a large number of ways that you can pay to grow your public utilities infrastructure. Our current Infrastructure in Cape Coral is broken into three different major areas.
The first area is the one we all see. The one which we become all too intimately familiar with when that assessment paper shows up. The pipes in the ground. This area of infrastructure is currently paid from assessments. There are other things rolled into those assessments, so we’ll save that part of the discussion for another day.
The next area, is the pump stations. The middle of the line infrastructure that moves the sewer away, and the water and irrigation to the property. This infrastructure is covered by Impact fees. You’re charged this fee when you hook into the system.
The third, and final area is the plant. We have plants that get water out of the ground, others that reclaim waste water so it can be treated, mixed, and sprinkled as irrigation water, and others still that dispose of the unusable remains. This area is currently being funded via increases in sewer and water rates.
All of this infrastructure has to be built somehow. The money doesn’t appear out of the air. Thankfully, the Finance Department found a reasonable approach for building out all of this necessary infrastructure.
There are other alternatives. We could raise the impact fees, or spread them out better. Remember, however, that these modifications carry other, long term effects, that can impact how our investments in property here grow. This is where the similarity comes in. It’s interesting to see the occassions that government begins to ‘think like a business’.
I’ve heard from a number of residents that they think it’s best to “let business pay for it!” This is along the same lines as the “Let the City pay for it!” responses. The city is you and I. The residents who live and work and own property here. The businesses that are here are also investing in the City’s future. So in effect, they are. Those comments really translate to “Let business pay to grow the city, so I don’t have to.”
The truth is, we all have to pay. We’ll put dollars in now, and we’ll get more out of it later, than what we’ve put into it. That’s true of the residential areas, and the businesses. The only reason that won’t come true for you, is if you jump out of the game too soon.
