The sausage factory

Posted 4/9/15

It was Otto von Bismarck who is thought to have said, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”

For all those who have followed the process, Bismarck could …

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The sausage factory

Posted

It was Otto von Bismarck who is thought to have said, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”

For all those who have followed the process, Bismarck could have been watching the deliberations of the City Council Sewer Review Commission. Of course, that isn’t possible. Bismarck died in 1898.

But following the work of the commission has been like watching the manufacture of sausages, only a lot slower and considerably more painful.

In the last two years, there have been so many commission meetings that we have lost count. The hours put into reviewing operations of the Warwick Sewer Authority operations, plans for the future and rules and regulations surely tally into the hundreds.

Ward 5 Councilman Ed Ladouceur took on this undertaking at a time when communication between the authority and the council was virtually nil and some council members were calling for the city to step in and take over. Of course, the authority is a city entity, so in effect what was being suggested was that until the council liked what it heard from the sewer authority, it was going to encounter a council roadblock. Any suggestion of extending sewers to help those homeowners with cesspools and failing septic systems, even those faced with state deadlines to make changes, were met with objection.

If anything, Ladouceur wore the parties down. More importantly, he opened lines of communication by bringing the stakeholders to the table. It became quickly apparent that running a sewer system is expensive, yet the system is an important asset to the community not only in terms of the health and environmental benefits it provides but also its impact on our economy. Can you imagine hotels, an airport, a hospital, a college, malls and businesses without sewers?

Ladouceur constantly drove home the point that by failing to extend sewers or upgrade the wastewater treatment plant, the city would be “kicking the can down the road” and, in the long run, the costs would be more. Last year, the council approved $56 million in bonds to extend sewers and make necessary upgrades.

And on Tuesday night, the City Council unanimously approved enabling legislation that, if approved by the General Assembly, allows the authority to revamp its method of assessments, address hardship cases and, among other things, reduce the cost of borrowing to cover assessment costs.

In the final hour of debate, the process of lawmaking bore remarkable resemblance to the manufacture of sausages. Some of what goes into the process was not exactly pretty and seemed more to do with showmanship than for the overall good of the public. What came out doesn’t entirely satisfy Ladouceur or those who played the role of devil’s advocate.

But it’s now done.

And, as we know from experience, the sausage factory never shuts down. There’ll be changes but, for now anyhow, let’s take a pause and see if it works.

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