Posted on April 5, 2018
By Bill Guida, Kenosha News
Ald. Dan Prozanski unloaded on administration and the majority of his fellow City Council members Monday for sinking another $400,000 into dredging Lincoln Park lagoon.
Prozanski was joined by Alds. Scott Gordon and Keith Rosenberg in casting dissenting votes in the 16-3 decision to approve administration’s recommendation to pay a contractor’s bill for dredging and removal of sediment from the lagoon.
The bill stemmed from apparent mistakes by engineering staff in the Public Works Department regarding the amount of sediment that needed to be removed from the lagoon. The amount turned out to be twice the original estimate.
“Paying $400,000 … to correct a wrong is a disservice to the people of Kenosha,” Prozanski told the council.
While not a tax, the charge for the service goes to property owners on their water and sewer bill, he said.
Prozanski traced the history of money allocated for the project, starting with $40,000 to study the project in 2014.
“In 2015 it went up to $100,000. In 2016, it went to $600,000. The more the project increased in scope, the more money was put into the (Capital Improvement Plan) to take care of it. The idea was, ‘Let’s clean this lagoon; it’s badly needed.’ I couldn’t agree more,” Prozanski said.
In 2016-17, Public Works came back asking for another $400,000 “because there was more sediment in the lagoon than we thought there would be,” Prozanski said.
“Now, we’re back at the table asking for another $400,000. We’re going to spend $1.5 million cleaning Lincoln lagoon,” Prozanski said, asking how that could be justified when the city hasn’t provided any funding to fix problems dating to the July 2017 flooding of homes and businesses.
“Not $1 of this $1.5 million goes toward helping people in my district,” said Prozanski, whose 14th District was among those hardest hit.
Had all the information regarding the need to address the city’s stormwater handling capabilities been known to aldermen in 2014-16, the Lincoln Park lagoon, which plays a minimal role in handling stormwater, wouldn’t have been among the priorities on a $1.5 million list, he said.
“We have $400,000 that we need to spend because, in the contracts that were written, to get rid of the additional sediment that came out of Lincoln lagoon, somebody forgot to put in an amount owed to those companies to dispose of that sediment,” Prozanski said, noting the bill dates to October.
Had that been known, as it should have been, the cost could have been placed in the city’s 2018 CIP, but it wasn’t, he said.
Now, he said, he is left to explain to property owners why there isn’t any money left to address the problems that led to the flooding and related damage to their homes.
Source: Kenosha News
