free hit counters
Chapter 2
When old man Sanderson died a few years earlier, and George Webb wound up owning the Spearfish Lake Record- Herald, Mike McMahon had become the news editor, and allowed himself to dream that he'd finally be able to quit grubbing around with the
newspaper circulation on Wednesdays.
Webb had long believed that newspaper front office people -- advertising and editorial and front office people -- needed to keep a sense of perspective by doing some of the dirty work. Since the paper was a weekly, there was no such thing as a mailroom staff, so
every Wednesday for a dozen years, Mike had pitched in with the printing, addressing, and delivery of the Record Herald. When Webb had left himself in the rotation, Mike knew there was no way he was going to get out of it.
There was one compensation, though; he thoroughly enjoyed it when his turn came to take the van to Camden, where the paper was printed. It was a long drive each way, with a couple of hours sitting around drinking coffee in the middle, and it made a marvelous time
to think. It gave him the chance to just sit and chew on a problem, reflect on it, and assess the possibilities. There were times that he had put off a major decision until he'd had the chance to do the Camden trip, just so he could consider the options without being bothered by
yelling children, ringing telephones, angry subscribers, or other such interruptions.
The problem that Mike was thinking about this morning wasn't the one he'd had on his agenda, though; this one had come out of the meeting of the Spearfish Lake City Council the night before. It hadn't been a major item at the meeting, and Mike hadn't even
mentioned it in his story he'd thrown together in the late hours of the evening before, but it put another brick into a decision that Mike had been reaching toward for a couple of years.
It had actually been item 11 on the agenda, titled "Storm sewer separation". Mike had been hearing about storm sewer separation for the dozen years he'd been covering the Spearfish Lake City Council, so he really hadn't been paying a lot of attention when City
Manager Don Kutzley reported, "The DNR turned us down on the storm sewer separation grant again, but said to reapply next time. However, they did say we've got to move ahead with the project."
"What are our options?" Mayor Ryan Clark asked.
"We can reapply for the grant," Kutzly said. "There's also a possibility that there's a Farm Home project we might be able to a grant for the project, but that's a longer shot than the DNR. But, if we get shot out of the saddle again, we're going to have to consider a
special assessment district. The last letter we got from the EPA wasn't nice at all."
Clark nodded; he knew the answer to his next question, but there were a couple new people on Council that might not, and there were people in the audience, as well. "If we had to get on it, how big a project is it going to be?"
"We had the engineering work done several years ago," Kutzley reported. "We did manage to get a DNR grant for that. At the time, it was estimated that it was going to be about a three million dollar project. However, construction costs have gone up since then, and
bids have been coming in high, so four million wouldn't surprise me."
"Well, I move we reapply, and take a shot at the Farm Home grant," Councilman Ray Milliman said. "A special assessment district ain't gonna go over real well."
The measure had passed unanimously, and the council went on to other business, while Mike made a mental note that he'd have to do a story on the whole storm sewer separation business. Maybe next week.
After a dozen years, he could have written the story in his sleep. The problem was fairly simple; while some of the storm sewers that drained the down emptied directly into the lake, there were many that drained through the sewage treatment plant. Most days, that
wasn't a problem; on a normal dry day, the plant treated about a million gallons of combined sewage and storm water, and the plant could handle four times that. But when it rained, the plant could be asked to handle twenty million gallons of water, or more; the overflow had to go
into the lake. While the overflow was admittedly dilute, it was still raw sewage, and the state Department of Natural Resources went ballistic.
Last year had been more wet than normal, and the storm sewers had overwhelmed the sewage plant 23 times. The DNR and the Environmental Protection Agency had not been pleased with the year-end report, to put it mildly.
The solution was fairly simple: build some new storm sewer lines that would take some of the rainfall load off of the sewage plant -- but those new sewers would cost that four million dollars Kutzley had been talking about, and some one would have to pay for them.
That's what had Mike thinking. A special assessment on property taxes would only affect the property owners involved, since the problem area was mostly in the south side of town, and that took in Mike and Kirsten. Without knowing the interest rate and the term
of repayment, it was hard to be sure, but Mike guessed that a special assessment district for the storm sewer separation would cost them somewhere between six and ten thousand dollars in extra property taxes, over a period of years.
The decision was clear to Mike, and had been clear for some time: it was time to move on, and before a possible buyer had the chance to realize the impact of the storm sewer costs.
The potential of the extra taxes was just another nail in the coffin of the decision, at least as far as Mike was concerned. It wasn't that great a house; it was nice and cozy when he and Kirsten had first bought it, but it was crowded with two kids, and a third would only
make matters worse. It wasn't the greatest of neighborhoods; while not a crime problem, or anything like that, it was grubby. The Camden and Spearfish Lake tracks ran right by the house, and in the summer, when the rock trains were running, the blat of a diesel air horn on one
of the engines could knock him out of bed any time of the day or night. And so on, and so on.
But that wasn't the problem with moving. Mostly, Kirsten didn't want to move.
Back before they both had started to take a small but growing financial interest in the Record-Herald, when old man Sanderson died, Mike had given some consideration to moving on to a better job, at a bigger paper, but Kirsten had dug in her heels. She really didn't
want to leave home, and Mike was sure the memory of Henry Tovio had something to do with that.
She didn't want to sell the house, either; she had lived there when she was small, and they had bought it from an elderly, widowed aunt of hers, so it sort of belonged in the family.
Mike also sort of suspected that Toivo got indirectly involved with that as well. Since Kirsten wouldn't actually marry Mike, on the impossible chance that Toivo might someday return, the joint ownership of the house meant something like a wedding to her. She'd once
said that selling it would seem like getting a divorce.
So convincing Kirsten to sell the house was going to be the problem, and the ten grand would be another argument he could use. And, he'd have to convince her soon, before the storm sewer project could drive prices down.
So, Mike thought as he drove into the edge of Camden, that was the stick. Was there anything he could use for a carrot?
