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Chapter 64
Kutzley got the message early on that this was going to be a bigger than normal council meeting, so he had Harry Masterfield roll out all the fire engines from the fire barn, and had a crew from the Department of Public Works bring a truckload of chairs over from the
school and set them up.
Mike's story in the Record-Herald the week after the first one hadn't done much to settle down the anger in Spearfish Lake, or at least in parts of it -- the parts shown in red shading on the two-color map of the town, run on the front page.
"Do you think we can get a sitter?" Kirsten had asked. "I'd kind of like to see this."
"It's going to be a zoo," Mike told her. "If they manage to get anything accomplished tonight, it'll be a miracle."
"I don't want to miss it," she said. "I'll call out to the club and see if Amy or Marsha would like to sit."
"Do that, and you'll have Josh and Danny over here too, and the refrigerator will never take it," Mike snorted. "But, if you want to go, that's probably the best idea."
"What time?"
"The meeting starts at 7:30, but we'd better have the kids here by 6:30," Mike told her. "We'll want to get there early, to get a good seat. One off to the side, out of the direct line of fire."
They made it to the meeting by a quarter to seven, and they were none too early. There was already a crowd, and there was an angry hubbub going on. "Here, save my seat," Mike said. "I want to get a couple pictures, and get a feel for this thing.
From the people standing around outside, Mike suspected that there wouldn't be enough seats, even this early. He went into city hall, to find it surprisingly uncrowded, considering the circumstances. Ryan Clark, Ray Milliman, Jack Musgrave and Don Kutzley were
standing in front of a big map of the city, one that had the proposed special assessment district marked on it. Nobody was saying much of anything. "What's happening,?" Mike asked.
"We got the engineering assessment back today," Kutzley said glumly. "Four point four million, now, but bids have been coming in high, so that could be ten percent too low."
"Five million bucks, by the time everything gets said and done," Clark said. "The goddamn feds are quick enough to tell you to do something, but when it comes to burping up some money to help you pay for what they tell you to do, they never heard of you."
"Got a crowd out there already," Mike observed.
"Yeah," Clark said. "Linda didn't want me to run again, and I should have listened to her. Fourteen years on this council is long enough, anyway. Well, I suppose if we let them get it out of their system tonight, maybe we can do something constructive next time."
"Well, hey, good luck tonight," Mike said.
"Yeah," Milliman said. "We're gonna need it."
The council members had taken their seats a couple minutes before 7:30 when Hjalmer Lindahlsen arrived, the last councilman to get there. He eased in quietly, and took a seat at the end of the table set up at the front of the fire barn. "Well, we might as well get this
basketball game started," Clark said to Kutzley, sitting next to him. He banged the gavel, and said into the microphone, "The second July meeting of the Spearfish Lake City Council is now in session. All rise for the Pledge of Allegiance." There was a scuffle of chairs as people
stood; the councilmen stood too, and turned around to face the flag at the back of the room.
As soon as the pledge had been completed, people took their seats, but Clark remained standing. "Considering the subject matter . . ."
"Louder!" some bull voice roared from the back of the room.
"Considering the subject matter," Clark started over, "We'll dispense with the reading of the minutes and other regular . . .
"Louder, you asshole!"
"That'll be enough right there," Clark said angrily. "This is serious business here tonight, and I will not tolerate any demonstrations or remarks out of turn, and I will ask the police to eject anyone causing a disturbance. Is that clear?"
The room was silent. "Is that clear to you, back there in the back?" Clark said. He waited a moment, then went on, "All right. As I was saying, we'll dispense with the reading of the minutes and the regular order of business until . . ."
"Louder, jerk!"
Clark shook his head, pointed at Harold and LeRoy, who were standing by the door of the fire department office, and made a sign back over his shoulder with his thumb. The two cops started for the back of the room, and Clark continued, ". . . until after we've
discussed this sewer separation business. Now, what you've read in the paper is basically correct, but just so we're all talking about the same thing, I want to ask the city manager to go back over this thing from the beginning, and bring us all up to date on what's happened since the
last council meeting."
Mike leaned over and whispered to Kirsten. "Trying to bore us to death, first."
It took Kutzley a good fifteen minutes to go over the history of the sewer separation project, the need for it, the attempts to get funding, the ultimatum from the EPA, and the engineering estimates. There was very little that he said that hadn't been in the paper in the
last two weeks, Mike noted to his satisfaction. "Now, while I submit to council the fact that we can go ahead with this project, and just charge everyone the full amount on their winter taxes," he said, "But I'm sure that this would cause distress to a good many of the citizens,
so I feel that we should at least explore the idea of going ahead and bonding for the project, to spread the cost out over ten years or more."
"Thank you, Don," Clark said. "Now, at this point, I want to throw the floor open for public comment, but I expect it to be orderly. Please raise your hand and be recognized." A forest of hands shot up; Clark could see that this was going to take a while. "Helen, let's
start with you," he said.
Helen was one of the old bats that went to all the council meetings and griped under her breath about everything, and Clark knew that she was going to get her two bits worth in, no matter what. "Why didn't the council take action on this before something like this
happened?" she asked.
"We've been trying to deal with it every year since I've been on Council," Clark said. "We've been trying to avoid a huge cost to the taxpayers. Obviously, we haven't been successful, but Helen, it's not from the lack of trying. Now, we're being forced into this by the
feds, whether we want to do it or not. Objectively, the problem is not that bad, but we've been unable to convince the DNR or the EPA of that. Let's have another question."
A forest of hands shot up again, but Heather's was not among them. She was sitting right in the center in the front, and had realized that the pot needed to simmer a while. Let them get all stewed up with the hopelessness of it all, she thought, then the snake can
descend upon them like a savior, a straw of hope to grasp. It could take a while.
It got considerably uglier over the next 45 minutes. Harold and LeRoy hauled three more people out of the meeting to give them a little discussion on the sidelines; one of them, who'd had a few too many before the meeting, threw a punch at Harold, not the brightest of
things to do under any circumstances. Quite suddenly, he was handcuffed into the back of a police car, rather the worse for wear, while one of the part-time officers drove his across town to the county jail.
The meeting was starting to get out of hand. The questions got ruder and dumber, although the crowd was relatively quiet, given the presence of Harold and LeRoy, when Clark gave the floor to a woman in the front row he didn't know. The woman got to her feet, and
said, so loudly and clearly that everyone in the room could hear her, "Mister Mayor, with all due respect, it would be a violation of federal law to build this sewer separation project."
"I'm sorry, m'am," Clark said. "I'm afraid I don't know who you are, and I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Mister Mayor," she replied, although she knew she was talking to the crowd, "My name is Heather Sanford. I'm a representative of the national office of the Defenders of Gaea. The sewer system you have is believed to be the home of a critically endangered
species of water snake, the Gibson's Water Snake. Earlier this month, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared this city and the sewer system a Critical Interest Area under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. This means that the Environmental Protection Agency may not
spend funds to force you to build this sewer system separation, and the fines for interfering with an endangered species are just as big as the EPA is threatening you with. I submit to you, Mr. Mayor, that it would be wise to tell that to the EPA."
"I never heard of such a thing," Kutzley said. "I mean, we got a notice a couple weeks ago about a Critical Interest Area, but the notice was pretty vague, and certainly never went into that kind of detail."
"It's quite true," Heather said. "I would submit to you that you're better off not building the sewer system separation."
Clark leaned over to Kutzley. "Does she have any idea of what she's talking about?"
"Beats the hell out of me," Kutzley whispered back. "I've never seen her before, but she sounds like she knows a heck of a lot more about the Endangered Species Act than I do."
Clark stood back up. "Mrs. . . uh, Sanford," he said.
"Miss Sanford," she chimed in.
"Miss Sanford, you've got us on this one," Clark said. "I suspect you know more about this than we do. I'm sure there are people here that would like to talk to you more about this, and I'm one of them. However, in the meantime, I think it would be best to table any
action on this matter until we can consider what you've told us. Do I hear a motion to that effect?"
"So moved," Lindahlsen said.
"Second," Milliman agreed instantly.
"It has been moved and seconded that we table this issue until we can learn more about these Endangered Species ramifications," Clark said. "All in favor say `Aye'.
"Aye," all seven councilmen said.
"Opposed, no," Clark asked. There was silence. "All right. I'd like to ask Don to assemble a committee of council persons and citizens to meet with Miss Sanford, and see what this is going to mean. I'd like to be on the committee, and . . ." he looked down the row
of councilmen, to see a couple of hands raised. "And Ray and Hjalmer. Let's see if we can meet at ten tomorrow morning. That be all right?"
"Not really," Kutzley said. "I think we want the city attorney there, and he's out of town till Thursday."
"This ought to keep that long," Clark said. "Ten on Thursday, then. I think we'll want Jack Musgrave there, too." He looked across the room. "Mike McMahon, I'd like you to sit in on this, too. I suspect a lot of people are going to want you to pass along what Miss
Sanford has to tell us."
