Public vote needed on city garage
At the Oct. 6, North Mankato city workshop meeting the council agreed to continue plans to build a new city garage facility on land in Upper North Mankato. For the first time, the city made potential building costs available to the public.
The estimated cost of the facility is $24 million. Financed with a 20-year general obligation bond, the total cost to taxpayers would be $41 million. A 30-year bond would result in a cost of $51 million.
Further, the city is considering a $5 million repair to the Spring Lake swim facility, a $2 million Belgrade Avenue upgrade and is even still considering a $27 million indoor sports facility.
This is an unsustainable tax burden for the citizens of North Mankato, a city of only 14,500, particularly considering national economic problems and potential county tax increases that lie ahead. The only councilperson to openly propose an alternative to the wildly expensive new city garage project was councilperson Sandra Oachs.
In the early 1970s the city closed the North Mankato city dump just off Webster Avenue. The site was compacted, covered with fill and in 1979 it became the city public works site. A city garage was built, most of the dump site paved over and a salt storage and vehicle storage building were added.
This site would operate on Webster Avenue for the next 50 years. The main city garage building was not maintained for many years and the roof now leaks, but the underlying steel and concrete block structure remains structurally sound. The current cold storage building and salt storage structure are in bad enough condition to need replacement.
The city plan is to vacate the 12.5-acre site, sell it to a developer who would then use state taxpayer funds to remove all the buried garbage and truck it to the Twin Cities, (at a potential cost of $15-plus million). The excavated site would then be filled with clean dirt and utilized for a housing development.
Local taxpayers would pay $40-$50 million for their new garage and state taxpayers would cover the cost to remove the landfill for a grand total of $55 to $65 million to move the city garage to its new site and clean up the old site for re-use.
The major city concern with continuing to use and rehab the existing site is that it is located on an old dump which still leaks methane gas which the city has already mitigated. Because no one actually lives at the site, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency website states that warehouse type structures or outdoor recreational areas are acceptable uses for old dump sites, even with methane issues. Called Brown Fields by the MPCA, the city still doesn’t want to continue operations on the 50-year old dump.
But then Oachs discovered on city provided maps that nearly a third of the current garage site is not contaminated by garbage and hence would be land the city could safely build on despite concerns about the dump. In fact, the new regional recycling center on Webster Avenue was built on a portion of the city garage site that has no dump material underneath. Oach’s discovery provides a reasonable alternative approach that could meet city needs at a greatly reduced cost to taxpayers.
The current site is large enough, (12.5 acres) even for future expansion. It has a gravel and asphalt base on much of the useable site. The existing garage/office building could be economically re-roofed and repurposed as winter storage building for city equipment without need for insulation, wiring, etc. which are already adequate and in place.
On the land Oachs indicated has no refuse under it, a structure could be built to serve as office space, a meeting/break room and restroom facility with a heated workspace attached. Resurfacing the site, repurposing the current garage for a storage unit, and building a new salt storage building and office/ workshop would cost far less than what the city has planned for a totally new site.
Utilizing the existing site would save the taxpayers many millions as well as the $15 million state taxpayers would have to pay to rehabilitate the dump site before housing could be built.
There would be no land cost, no additional water retention costs, less site preparation with an asphalt base already in place, no new utility lines or roadwork to the site, and lower interest payments on any necessary bonding.
In fact, much more could be saved by proceeding with these building projects incrementally as the current facility is still being effectively used. There may be other options as well, including an Upper North Mankato satellite site for mowers and snowplows.
No one is questioning the need to deal with problems at the North Mankato city garage. The questions are: what do we absolutely need and what can taxpayers afford. But the city has provided no data to the public or the council as to number of vehicles that require winter storage, office and workspace needs or any other requirements.
The council seems to be relying on the recommendations of the public works director, and the council is reluctant to explore other options. There has been no investigation of the comparative cost of rehabilitating or repurposing the current site and the city still has no information on what past sampling of the old garage area has discovered as to where the existing dump materials are actually located.
The first public hearing on the city’s $24 million ($41-$51 million with bond interest) proposal is Dec. 1. As plans move forward for potential approval, the city has no plan to put the project before the voters. To avoid a public vote the city plans to have the Port Authority issue general obligation bonds which precludes public weigh-in unless petitioned by 5% of the voters who voted in the last election.
Not to consider an alternative plan that would satisfy city needs and save taxpayers potential millions would be a dereliction of the financial diligence owed by the city council to North Mankato citizens.
We need to demand a careful study and review of Oach’s possible alternative to a completely new city garage before spending $41 to $51 million of our future tax dollars.
Many of our citizens are living paycheck to paycheck and some are food and housing insecure. Tax increases needed to pay for the planned city garage will increase costs for everyone and result in price and rent increases, which the poorest among us will feel most.
Contact your Council members and mayor and demand fiduciary responsibility and a thorough evaluation. And most importantly, demand a public vote.
Thomas Hagen, lives in North Mankato.