Guest Column by Craig Clark

Some may remember the song crooned by Frank Sinatra “High Hopes” that outlines the efforts of an ant, a ram and the eventual outcome of a toy balloon in their struggle against what appear to be insurmountable odds. Those lyrics seem fitting to the final outcome of 2015 legislative session. We had high hopes of our own for rural communities as the election pundits and legislative leaders coined this legislative session as the “Greater Minnesota session.”

Chief among our “high hopes” in Austin were to see some partnership with the state to address our workforce housing issues, address local government aid and provide a reprieve on overreaching wastewater rules.

We’re glad the Legislature showed some re-recognition of our problems with workforce housing by adopting a program that can address the gap in construction costs versus affordability. This program allows increased income thresholds that enable both the public sector and renters to help make housing projects economically viable. We needed a program that recognizes that business growth and job creation warrant a partnership to provide the infrastructure to improve our local economy. Workforce housing has to be as important as low-income housing or our job creators will be stifled.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that our rural communities request from the Legislature was for $60 million in tax credits and $40 million in grant assistance. The cost of housing projects certainly demand this type of investment and in the context of affordable housing getting a $100 million influx last year and ongoing appropriations of $50 million annually, the ongoing funding next year of $2 million doesn’t provide many resources to tackle expensive housing projects statewide. The pent-up demand and reality that communities across the state have not seen new purely market-rate projects for well more than 30 years dictate much better.

On another issue, while Gov. Dayton made a decisive push for LGA in 2014 that provided relief from the deferred needs of many rural communities, we continue to be below the program’s 2002 non-inflationary authorized levels. Local government aid recognizes the difficulties of low tax base cities to provide resources for core services and continues to prove its effectiveness every day that LGA works.

Imagine Austin needing to increase taxes 284 percent to replace our partnership with the state. While we still have challenges, the LGA program ensures all Minnesota communities have a similar ability to provide basic services.

Regrettably, our statewide push for $45.5 million to restore the LGA program to the 2002 level suffered in what became an entanglement between passing a tax bill and transportation funding. This impasse impacted the workforce housing proposal and our hope of strengthening the LGA program into the future. With a massive state surplus we should have seen more consensus on this issue.

The environmental bill felt like a roller coaster and our hope for a common sense response to Minnesota Pollution Control Agency regulations that were approved without legislative oversight proved to be a casualty of rhetoric over substance. Yes, we all want cleaner water and our wastewater plant in Austin is by its pure measure already sending out cleaner water than the Cedar River itself. We wanted our legislators to approve any new rules to ensure a proper balance is reached regarding the costs and seeking alternative of ways to improve the environment. We also wanted an outside peer review and cost analysis of the standards to be done to better understand what communities might bare in costs, and more specifically what environmental improvements will be produced. While we don’t know what the financial impact will be, it could be as much as $20 million in costs to rate payers or a 32 percent increase in rates. It is unfortunate that a provision that was in both the House and Senate versions of the environment bill could not gain a final consideration for something that had bi-partisan support in the Legislature. Time will tell how this plays out with Austin’s permit being subject to renewal this summer.

We’ll continue to work like the ant in the song “High Hopes” and we certainly feel like it is a struggle to “move that rubber tree plant” at the Legislature, but I’m sure Austin and our rural communities across the state will continue to ask fair questions and look for partnerships to address our issues. We know actions and not words are the measure of whether or not our state leader’s delivered on their claim that this would be the “Greater Minnesota session.” I think our feisty and determined ant (rural communities) will continue to work on our issues to make sure all Minnesotans enjoy the fruit of the economic recovery that produced the $2 billion surplus.

 

Craig Clark is the Austin city administrator.