free hit counters
Chapter 56
It didn't happen very often, but every now and then, Mike knew that when he sat down at the computer to write, it was going to ignite a fire storm, and he'd never had the feeling more strongly than he had at this time.
The Spearfish Lake City Council met every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. For twelve years, now, every other week Mark had come back to the Record-Herald after the meeting, to do the council story and with it put the finishing touches on the paper.
There were some preparations to be made before he could write. Alone in the building, in the late evening right after the council meeting, he checked the front page, the only page still laid out on the makeup tables. From the agenda, it hadn't looked like it was going to
be much of a council meeting, and he thought he'd been generous to leave fourteen inches for it. The hole left for the council story didn't lead the page, either, but he could slide the county commission story he'd planned on leading with down, and cut down on the size of the
headline, and that would gain a few inches. Not enough.
There was a three column picture at the upper left, of the firemen out fighting a grass fire. There'd been enough of those; they could do without, this time. Yanking the photo opened up a rather ragged six-column hole, clear across the page, and if any story called for a
six-column head, this one did. The Record-Herald hadn't run one of those since the girl's softball team won the state championships, back in '83. The page would look unbalanced, but he doubted that anyone would care about the niceties.
With a six-column streamer, that left a hole of about 24 inches. It probably wouldn't be enough, but there was a filler ad back on page 7 where the story could be jumped, if it had to be. Mike hated to have to jump the story, especially one like this, so decided to try and
write it to 24 inches.
He went back down to his office, booted up the computer on his desk, and loaded Pagemaker. It wasn't the greatest program for writing, but he could work right to the size of the hole. He stared at the blank, gray screen, hoping inspiration would come for a headline.
He liked to start with a headline, since sometimes it could define the story, but everything he could think of was too long. Maybe the story could help him, so he bit his lip, and started,
"Property owners in about half of Spearfish Lake will be faced with special property assessments of up to $7,500 per acre to pay for separation of the storm and sanitary sewers, following an announcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week that
the city will be fined up to $20,000 per day, unless the action is taken."
That wasn't quite right, and it was unwieldy, but he could clarify it. Best to blame the EPA right up front, he thought; the council is going to take enough heat as it is. My God, am I ever glad Kirsten and I sold out when we did, he thought for the umpteenth time since
item number 9 had come up on the council's agenda. He got on with the story:
"The Spearfish Lake City Council was informed of the EPA action at Tuesday's meeting, when City Manager Don Kutzley announced that commencing July 1 of next year the city will have to pay fines of $10,000 for each day the city's waste water treatment plant is
out of compliance. As of July 1, 1990, the fines will go to $20,000 per day."
There, he thought, that clarifies the ambiguity of the lead. Better get into the why a little more, before we get to the bad part.
"Kutzley said that the Environmental Protection Agency took the action in response to the repeated flooding of the city's sewer treatment plant caused by storm water being allowed into the sewage water during periods of heavy rains. Last year, the plant was out
of compliance for this reason 23 times, although it's only flooded out eight times so far this year.
"Part of the city's storm drainage is on the surface, or in short, separate storm drains to lakes or lowlands, and these areas are not affected by the action. However, much of the south part of the city has storm drainage into the sewer system.
Mike realized it was time to get to the part that was going to set off the screaming:
"An engineering study done in 1983 indicated that it would cost about $3,000,000 to remedy the problem. However, Kutzley indicated that due to increased construction costs and higher interest rates, a final figure well over the $4 million mark could be expected.
"The city has made repeated attempts over the last fifteen years to find state and federal funds to remedy the problem, to no avail. `Without any hope of funding, we're obviously going to have to do it ourselves,' Kutzley said. `I've looked at it every way I can think of,
and the only fair way I can see to fund the project is to assess the property owners in the problem area.'"
Mike floundered for a few seconds. It was necessary to take a fairly complicated idea that Kutzley had presented over several minutes, and sum it up in a second or two, without confusing the reader.
"`The fairest way to do it', Kutzley explained, is to assess each property owner in the area by their percentage of land area in the problem zone. `Larger properties contribute more to the runoff than smaller ones do,' he said."
That tended to ignore the fact that the city itself was a large landowner in the area, and from what Mike had been able to figure out, Kutzley hadn't included streets and parking lots and the like in the runoff, although they contributed. That opened up a can of worms,
though, and Kutzly's plan was admittedly a rough-cut. Which, Mike knew, was a point he'd better make before much longer.
"The city manager indicated that the problem was confined to an area a little under eight hundred acres, located on south side of town. The area is mostly residential, although it includes much, though not all, of the Spearfish Lake school complex. He said that early,
rough calculations would mean that it would cost about $5,000 per acre to fund the storm water sewer, and more than that if bonds are taken out and interest paid on them. With interest, the cost could go to half again as much."
There it was. It was out. Actually, Mike thought, if Kirsten and he had stayed at the old house, it really wouldn't be anywhere near as bad a hit has he had expected -- only something in the thousand to twelve hundred dollar bracket. He could have swallowed that, so
he was glad he hadn't used that as an argument to move to the new place. He liked that a heck of a lot better, even though the road was getting a little out of hand.
"Mayor Ryan Clark commented, `It's a darn shame that the federal government has to come along, and cram this down our throats. I feel sorry for the people affected by this, but there's nothing left to do but go ahead with this, however much we don't want to.'
"Councilman Ray Milliman agreed, "The people in the special assessment district aren't going to be very happy about this, and I don't blame them one bit. We've done our best to try to avoid this, and now we're stuck with it.'"
Yeah, Mike thought. It really wasn't the money; under the circumstances, it wasn't an impossible figure. It was the EPA cramming it down the city's throat that really burned.
He checked the inch count. He was getting there, better than he had expected. Better start to wind this up, he thought.
"After considerable discussion, council voted 7-0 to have Kutzley go ahead with developing a detailed plan to develop the special assessment districts, to explore the possibility of bonding, and to have the engineering plans reviewed in preparation to take construction
bids. Construction could start yet this fall.
"City attorney Charles Blackbarn told the council that it was within their authority, under the city charter, to order the special assessment district to go ahead without a vote of the people, although a special election would be necessary for bonding. Council will discuss
the possibility of a bond election at their next meeting, set for July 28."
And that meeting will be a zoo, Mike thought. He checked his inch count again. Close; there were only about three inches left. That wasn't enough to do a sidebar on other council business, which there wasn't much, and that would mean a bigger tearup of the paper.
Good enough, he thought. I'll just fill it up with an "In other business," line, and add a few taglines. That ought to hold it.
His fingers flew over the keys, finishing up the few lines of the story. He ran back up to the beginning of the story and read over it, catching a couple of spelling errors, and suspecting that he missed some, too.
That left the problem of a headline "CITY FORCED TO BUILD DRAIN" really summed it up, but there had to be some way to bring out that it was the property owners that were getting hit in the wallet. A kicker reading, "LANDOWNERS TO PAY BIG" would do
it. He typed the headline and kicker out, and stared at it for a minute. It would have even more impact if it were the other way around, he realized finally, so he changed it. "LANDOWNERS TO PAY BIG" would now be spread across the six columns, in 84 point type.
There'd be screaming tomorrow; there was no point in being a shrinking violet.
Mike shook his head. It wasn't a great story, but it would draw a good reaction. He was tired, and it would have to do. He saved it to the hard drive, and to a floppy. He took the floppy up to the layout room, booted up the 286 and Laserprinter, and ran the story off. It
only took a couple minutes to paste down and put in the box, where Sally would find it in the morning. For once, he was glad he didn't have to make the Camden run the next day; it was always tough after a council meeting, but it was even tougher after one like this one. As
an afterthought, he wrote a note to have an extra 500 papers printed; this one would probably sell pretty well at the dealers.
Mike shut off the lights, and the computers, then went out and got in the Rabbit. Though Susan would probably be asleep, Kirsten would still probably be up. It was kind of a shame about Susan; so far, she'd been a pretty good baby.
