Envision Freedom, Eureka

Taxes and Public Benefit

Hopefully all of my readers found their way to www.mnpropertyrightswatch.org to read more about the recent goings-on with the water management issues in the Vermillion River Watershed.  The looming deadline for ordinance adoption has overshadowed and engulfed local efforts on the Collaborative Water Management Plan.

Last night, Eureka's town board began to address the proposed water management ordinance.  At that board meeting, in a roundabout way and perhaps unintentionally, Supervisor Carrie Jennings pointed out a consideration that's been so far overlooked in this discussion and which leads to the conclusion that the Joint Powers Organization should administer this water management ordinance.

She argued that individual landowners should bear the costs of implementing this ordinance because otherwise, taxes would have to be raised.

By that same logic, we should force the landowners whose land is taken by the Met Council for sewer line easements to give free easements and pay for the cost of laying the sewer line across their land because otherwise, the taxpayers would have to bear the cost.

It's fundamentally unfair to saddle individuals with the cost of implementing measures that benefit the public at large. That's why it's unconstitutional.

The ordinance's avowed purpose is to "protect the public health, safety, and welfare through the effective management of water resources in this Community." The plan upon which it is based goes on at great length to explain how the land in the watershed is connected by water, and how actions in one part of the watershed affect other parts of the watershed.

So if conservation easements in buffer areas are intended to serve the entire watershed (and beyond), shouldn't the cost be spread over the entire watershed?

The township doesn't have the power to do that, but the Joint Powers Organization does.

And if the watershed as a whole doesn't believe that the benefit to be gained justifies the cost, then maybe it wasn't such a good idea to begin with.

What's in a Name? Part I

After reading about the County's street naming ordinance I started thinking about the power to name something.  A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but "any other name" would conjure up a different image.

So here we have the "Dakota County Rural Collaborative Local Water Management Plan."  The name itself puts most people to sleep. (Do I really have to read it?)

Wouldn't it be nice if the title was less boring and convey something about what the Plan is about?  Here's one possibility:

The "It's so Hard to Read Let's Just Pass it Without Any Discussion" Plan.

That's what almost happened last August.  The plan was part of the public hearing where the Comprehensive Plan was also up for discussion.  The Comprehensive Plan draft had been through a long and public vetting process, and the public hearing attracted many concerned citizens eager to give their views on it.

In contrast, the "It's so Hard to Read Let's Just Pass it Without Any Discussion" Plan had not received any kind of discussion or opportunities for public input.  There was nobody at the public hearing who could address the questions that were raised about it.  In attending subsequent meetings of the Planning Commission, I learned that no-one on the planning commission had read it.

And who can blame them?  It's a horrible thing to try to get through.

For those brave and energetic souls who can get past the long and boring name, the mammoth size at 243 pages, together with the small print and liberal use of technical jargon and acronyms will generally cause the eyes to glaze over.  Because I do not want that to happen to my dear readers, I will not provide any long quotes from the document. 

The full text is available at the township's home page under "Rural Collaborative Water Plan"

There you can read all about glacial geomorphology, moraine areas, Des Moines Lobe till, surficial sediment, the obligatory sections on "Pre-Settlement Vegetation," "sensitive habitats and communities,""critical areas", and rare flora and fauna, along with many colorful maps showing us what the DNR sees when it looks at our land.  You can also learn about "stress ranges for brown trout."

There's even a section titled "Human Environment."  Unlike the sections covering plants and animals, however, there's no mention about stress ranges for humans or how this plan will affect landowners' blood pressure.  But you can read about all of the ways in which humans pose a potential threat to the groundwater.

At some point I learned that the "It's so Hard to Read Let's Just Pass it Without Any Discussion" Plan contained the actual text of Vermillion River Watershed Joint Powers Organization's Water Management Plan, and that's why it contained references to every geographical area within the entire watershed, instead of being limited to our township.  And that's why it contained so many goals, objectives and tasks that make no sense at all if applied to Eureka Township (e.g., "Continue to fund the Vermillion River Watch program," "Develop a management framework for water bodies, based on existing statutory classifications, desired uses, existing conditions, and the priorities of the VRWJPO")

There hasn't been any public discussion or consideration of any of this content to date.

After the August, 2008 public hearing, the sentiment was expressed at the next planning commission meeting that, considering the time and expense spent on the Plan, it was ridiculous that the planner who wrote it didn't bother explain it to anyone at the township.

Minutes from the following week's board meeting state that the planning commission needs more study of the Water Management Plan.

Fast forward to January, 2009.  Dean Johnson, the planner who wrote the "It's So Hard to Read, Let's Just Pass it Without Any Discussion" Plan, held a meeting in Empire Township, inviting all of the rural townships to send representatives so that he could explain the upcoming ordinances that he was going to draft to implement the plan.  I learned about the meeting and decided to attend so that I could ask the guy some questions.

The "You Don't Have to Understand it" Plan.

Mr. Johnson made it very clear that he didn't understand the technical aspects of the Plan.  He told the assembled township officials that if anybody asked them about TMDL's or anything like that, just respond that they didn't have to understand it either.  All the rural township officials have to know about the Plan, he explained, is that if they adopt it, they get to keep permitting authority, and if they don't adopt it, their landowners will have to go to the Vermillion River Watershed Joint Powers Organization for permitting.  This would, he said, probably have the effect of costing the landowners more money to get permits, not to mention having to go before both the JPO and the township to get a permit.

Mr. Johnson was asked about whether there would be maps showing what land parcels would be subject to the requirements in his draft ordinance to implement the "You Don't Have to Understand It" Plan.  He said that, due to the short deadlines for adopting the ordinance, the maps may not be ready before the deadline for adoption was up. 

To confirm my understanding of what he had just said, I asked whether that meant that the town boards were expected to pass his ordinance without knowing what land it would apply to.  He said yes.

Here's the handout addressing Mr. Johnson's thoughts on the "You Don't Have to Understand It" ordinance.  More possible names later.

Consent of the Governed

Back to the Eureka Township Water Management Plan, which has already been approved by the Vermillion River Watershed Joint Powers Organization (VRWJPO) but has not yet been approved by the township. This is being advertised as a take-it-or-leave-it deal, and if we don't take it, it will be imposed on us anyway by governmental entities with more power than the township, and the township won't have any control over it. 
As though obediently adopting a plan which we are told we have no power to change can be described as local control in the first place.

Apparently, unquestioning obedience to the authority of government is what is expected of our township officials. 

I received a CD with a copy of the plan on it, and it is inscribed as "Water Plan - Final 2008 LWMP"

I wrote about this before, describing the public hearing that was held without anyone being present who could answer questions about the plan.

For anyone who is interested, there will be a joint meeting of the board and the planning commission tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the town hall, where supervisor Carrie Jennings will explain the plan to our elected and appointed officials.

With that as a backdrop, I thought it was serendipitous that this morning I came across this posting entitled, "Would you have been a Nazi?"  It describes the obedience experiments by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, and replicated more recently by Santa Clara University psychologist Jerry Burger, which concluded that the average rate of obedience to authority is about 65%, even when the experiment's subjects were instructed to inflict severe and life threatening injury on others.

These appalling results should serve as a very sobering message, and leave us with a commitment to the basic freedoms we usually take for granted.  Consider the meaning of these words:
 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

More later on the Water Management Plan.

Water Management Plan Update

As previously described, the recent public hearing on the proposed collective Water Management Plan  was a sham.  Nobody at the hearing seemed to know what the Plan contained.  The individual who wrote it wasn't at the hearing.  I asked that the township take more time to review the proposed plan so that township citizens could find out what was in it.

Here's the letter I submitted after the hearing.

Last night the Planning Commission considered the issue and decided to hold off on acting on the Plan until it could learn more about it. 

Jeff Otto was present and told the Planning Commission I had offered to scan the Plan document into a .pdf file for the township so that it could be posted on the township's website.  I explained that I'd already taken the five minutes that it took to scan it in, and that it was available on-line.  Ken Olstad asked me to send him a link to it so that he could put the link on the township's website.