Letter about fair and equitable…
To the Editor,
Fair and equitable, interesting words with a lot of different meanings when it comes politics it seems. I had a conversation with the county tax assessor a while back and he left me with those words (plus a few others). They have stuck with me ever since. Taxes and assessments should be fair and equitable to the residents. Hard to argue that philosophy for us living in the United States.
So, I’m wondering what was fair and equitable about the 2020 Harmony street project? Hmm, it seems they had inflated the total cost of the project by ~$300,000 upon reviewing the contractor invoice and summary given out by the city at the conclusion of the project. After a quick conversation with another resident over the weekend, the city appears to have charged double for the sewer and water hookups.
Those sewer and water service hookups were included in the contractor invoice, but when looking over the invoice, the costs appear to be billed in part of the street reconstruction costs.
So, if all the work (per invoice) for the reconstruction is in the $1,666,629.00, that means the cost of the water and sewer hookups were included and accounted for in the “Services Imp. and Street Imp.” line items. Why was another separate charge (~$121,585) for water and sewer hookups added by the city on top of the ~$1.6M cost? What additional work was done and by who?
So, unless there is another invoice from the contractor (same contractor did the hookups) showing the cost rising to ~$1,809,463.20 (from the original ~$1.6m) the residents were charged twice for the work when figuring the assessments.
Was it or is it “fair and equitable” for the residents?
Brad Thacher
Resident, Harmony, Minn.