The Local Option Sales Tax is the most painless (and many of us believe the most fair) way to raise a large amount of money in a relatively short time.

If it was easy to solve our storm drain problems, water quality problems, and our flooding problems merely with a property tax why haven’t we done it?

Because the citizens of Albert Lea have constantly pressured public officials to keep our taxes low.

Our public officials abided by our wishes.

We now face a major problem.

During these many years of low property taxes, our storm water and sanitary sewer lines have deteriorated.

A 2.5-inch rainfall frequently requires that the city pump raw sewage into our storm drains, which empty right into our lakes.

Our storm water system is in terrible shape. Many of our storm sewer lines have cracks in them and they leak into our sanitary system which also have many leaks.

Because of the cracks, sometimes the sanitary system leaks into our storm drains and into our lakes. Most of our storm drains do not have filters so all kinds of debris from leaves, grass clippings, motor oil and other garbage left on the streets wash into them.

Some of our storm water drains are intertwined with the sanitary sewers.

This is now illegal.

Many people believe that if they don’t live on the lake, they aren t part of the problem.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you live in Albert Lea and you have a storm drain on your street, where do you think that water is going?

It is going directly into one of our lakes.

Many of those storm drains run long distances!

There are 52 storm sewer outlets from more than 2,000 street drains that empty into Fountain and Albert Lea Lakes.

This water must be cleaned up and it will be expensive.

We must make no mistake regarding the urgency of this matter. The state and federal governments will impose water quality mandates on Albert Lea beginning in 2007.

We can solve this problem in a relatively painless way through the Local Option Sales Tax.

The Minnesota Department of Revenue estimates that the average citizen in Albert Lea will pay $34.70 cents a year in local option sales taxes.

They also estimate that 20 to 30 percent

of the tax will be paid by visitors to our city.

This means that the property owner will not bear 100 percent of the burden.

Furthermore, all citizens and not just property owners, will help solve the problem.

The biggest benefit of the Local Option Sales Tax is that we will finally have a local funding source.

Lack of a local funding source has been a huge barrier to getting anything done with our lakes.

There are many state and federal grants available but they all require matching funds and we haven’t been able to qualify for very many in the past.

We should be able to leverage each dollar raised through the local option sales tax perhaps 2 to 3 times. We may be able to turn fifteen million dollars over ten years into perhaps forty five million dollars.

On Nov. 8 the residents of Albert Lea will have the best chance ever to begin the process of cleaning up our lakes and to begin controlling frequent flooding and lakeshore erosion. Successful passage of the half cent

sales tax will provide a funding source we have never had before.

Give Albert Lea a chance.

Vote yes for clean lakes to promote growth and economic development.

Vote yes for improved waters for fish as well as recreational opportunities for the people of our community.

Vote yes for increased tourism revenues.

Finally, vote yes to insure that future generations within our community will be able to enjoy clean lakes.

(Karen Trow, Co-Chair, Committee for Clean Lakes)