Today, the city is set to hear gripes and complaints about yet another hike to the already overly excessive municipal water charge. We will not hesitate on this subject. Let's just get directly to the point. The city of Jackson has been continuously passing the bill on to the loyal citizens of the city for an issue that they themselves are responsible for. A few days ago, no one was given warning that their water would be brown from the issues the city was experiencing. Now the story is, the water is safe to drink, but not safe to wash your clothes in. Something about this story does not even seem REAL. The bulk of the matter is the ongoing maintenance issues that the city's waterworks piping and drainage systems are experiencing.
It has already been said in the past, that the piping below our city are older that some of the nations oldest cities. Every winter season, we experience some of the most dumbfounded outages that not even some major metropolitan cities experience. So that leads one to wonder, is this a planned repair to help with the coming winters issues. No one knows. What EVERYONE does know is that the city does nothing to repair the issue longtime. Its all simple expensive patchwork. In 2010 the city spent 20 million dollars to repair severe issues that the city was having during a winter snap. 20 MILLION DOLLARS. And when they patch the work, it is done with iron. So were spending an excessive amount of taxdollars to repair cast iron 100 year old piping with simple ductile iron. And each time one is fixed, it seems as though 5 more breaks occur somewhere else on another edge of the city. SO the city now proposes a hike in the water services for the citizens. The council is holding a public hearing at 6:00 p.m. for you to voice your thoughts on the rate increase proposal. If approved, city water rates would go up by about 30% and sewer rates would double.
Let's think about that. You want to raise the rates by 30% and double the sewer rates with no gaurantee that this will not happen again. We patiently waited to see what the first move from the new Lumumba regime would be and sad to say, we kept an open heart and hoped for the best. But with a budget of 357 million dollars annualy, why is the city raising prices to still not fix the problem that they are responsible for maintaining. And to top that of, there is no real plan for the future. So to that I propose this.
Trenchless Pipe Replacement
The picture below is pretty accurate of how our city water lines are looking right now. Trenchless Pipe replacement gets rid of cast iron and iron and replaces those pipes with a durable plastic that has for years been tested and constantly upgraded to a point where it has reached a standard for a 40+ year replacement window. OUR COUNCIL is behind the power curve. We spoke about this earlier this year about being with the times of technology and advancement. Why is this not the method our city is moving towards. It cannot be a money issue. If they can put money aside for a planned toll road and city developements of the future, then we may as well write a bond or float some funds for this long overdue project. This is our S.O.S to the council. SAVE OUR CITY. It crumples one pipeline at a time and you are doing nothing to stop it. We no longer need patchwork for 5 years. We need standards for the next 50. We urge everyone to make it down to the council meeting tonite to express their concerns. We will be there.
More info on T.R.R
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