ISSUES COULD FUND SEWER, STREET WORK

A proposal to place before Cape Girardeau voters a $25 million bond issue for sewer improvements would be the first opportunity for the city to address a perennial problem with combined sanitary and storm sewers.

The Cape Girardeau City Council heard the bond proposal for the first time Monday, but took no action to place the issue on an election ballot.

For years, residents of Cape Girardeau's older neighborhoods have asked City Hall to repair or replace their outdated sewers.

During the past several years residents have reported most often following heavy rains sewage-filled basements and raw sewage discharged in drainage ditches and into Cape LaCroix Creek.

The issue was prominent during the 1990 city council election campaign, when several candidates pledged to work to correct the sewer problems.

Finally in 1991, the city completed an $80,000, 20-year sewer master plan, which proposed specific projects totalling about $19 million to complete segregation of all the city's combined sewers and make other needed sewer improvements.

Now for the first time a funding mechanism to make the repairs has been proposed.

Assistant City Manager Al Stoverink said that by extending the city's quarter-cent capital improvements sale tax through 2020, the city can finance the issuance of bonds to pay for the sewer improvements and at no added cost to taxpayers.

"It's a total solution to the sewer problems that exist in the older part of the city," Stoverink said. "This represents a very feasible and practical way to eliminate those problems."

Previously, citizens' concerns about the combined sewer system primarily were confined to the College-Henderson system that when flooded empties raw sewage into a drainage ditch that passes through Shawnee Park into Cape LaCroix Creek.

Other combined systems in the city empty instead into the Mississippi River, where the sewage is diluted to a much greater extent.

But with the flood of 1993, Stoverink said the Environmental Protection Agency and the state's Department of Natural Resources now are pushing for replacement of all combined sewer systems.

During this year's flood, the combined sewers' drainage channels have backed up with river water. The only way to treat the sewage from the combined system would be to pump it along with storm water and flood water into the sewage treatment plant.

But that would tax the treatment plant's capacity.

"The main problem is that we inundate the system when we have rains or when the river's backed up to the point that we're not able to treat it and it has to be bypassed into Cape LaCroix Creek or the river," Stoverink said.

He said the EPA already has mandated cities with populations exceeding 100,000 to segregate combined sewer systems. "We feel it's just a matter of time before smaller cities also are mandated," he said.

Also during flooding, some city sewer lines surcharge where storm water and debris seeps into sewer lines.

"That adds tremendously to the flow in these sewer lines, which are designed just for sewage from plumbing systems and not for additional wet-weather flow," Stoverink said.

Included in the sales tax measure would be money for sewer relief lines to alleviate the surcharging. The program also includes the completion of the trunk sewer system within the existing city limits.

Aside from the sewer improvements, the Cape Girardeau City Council also has flirted with the possibility of placing before the voters a transportation tax measure to fund street projects.

At Monday's city council meeting, Councilman Al Spradling III questioned whether the council might want to include a half-cent transportation tax on the ballot alongside the sewer bond issue.

Unlike the nearby cities of Jackson, Perryville and Sikeston, Cape Girardeau has no transportation tax. A half-cent tax would generate more than $2.5 million annually, Stoverink said.

The assistant city manager said he didn't include the transportation tax in his proposal to the city council for pragmatic reasons.

"I think common sense would indicate that the people might not be willing to support that great of an effort at this point," he said. "I may be wrong on that, and the council may choose to let the community decide that issue."

Stoverink said opportunities abound in Cape Girardeau for infrastructure improvements, because the city has one of the lowest sales and property tax rates in the state.

As a regional retail, medical and education hub, Stoverink said citizens are "missing a golden opportunity" to finance street and sewer improvements through sales taxes.

"As a retail hub, the cost of major investments in the community can be spread out to the extent that it has very little cost for any individual," he said.

"People in the community get angry and frustrated over taxes that the federal government and the state legislature has proposed then vote down an improvement project in their own back yard," Stoverink added. "But we want to give people the opportunity to vote on an issue like this where there's a clear and demonstrated need, with very minimal or no increase in taxes being paid."

Although the city tried in 1986 and again in 1987, unsuccessfully, to pass a transportation sales tax, Stoverink said he believes the sewer and transportation issues would fare better this time.

In 1986 and 1987, the city had no comprehensive plans that provided clear solutions to sewer problems and proposed specific street projects.

Also, the impetus for sewer and street master planning came from citizens frustrated over crumbling infrastructure.

The timing also is important, particularly for the sewer issue, because state funds are available to subsidize interest on the bond financing.

"With the interest rates we'll be able to get right now, it's going to cost the community more to defer doing this, because inflation will be greater than the financing costs," he said.