Posted on June 21, 2023
City leaders’ hopes to dredge Lake Mitchell were dashed Tuesday night by the Mitchell City Council.
In a historic vote that came after more than an hour of discussion between the council and public input, the council voted 4-4 on a $25 million state loan application that would have funded a multimillion-dollar dredging project. The council’s 4-4 tie vote denied the city from submitting an application for a $25 million 30-year loan.
Heading into Tuesday’s meeting, Council President Kevin McCardle was the lone council member who had yet to declare his stance on dredging. After analyzing the financial impact of the estimated $53 million project, McCardle said his gut feeling was the city “can’t afford it.”
“I’ve talked to 60 to 80 people over the last 10 days who were in favor and not in favor of the project. I agree the lake is an asset, but I can’t see myself putting us in that financial difficulty for the next 30 years. My gut feeling is that we can’t afford to pay close to $2 million a year for the next 30 years,” McCardle said prior to voting against the loan application.
Joining McCardle in voting against the loan application were council members Dan Allen, Dan Sabers and John Doescher.
Council members Jeff Smith, Marty Barington, Susan Tjarks and Steve Rice all voted in favor of the application.
While the mayor can break tie votes on agenda items that don’t involve expending city money, the loan application entailed spending city money. That halted Mayor Bob Everson, who has been a strong advocate for dredging, from breaking the council’s tie vote.
After McCardle revealed his stance against the loan application, an emotional Tjarks, who has been a vocal supporter of the dredging project, pleaded with McCardle to change his stance on the project. She dubbed a no vote on the loan application as a “terrible insult” to the community, pointing to the Forward 2040 survey – which saw a little over 2,000 participants – that revealed respondents saw cleaning the lake as the biggest challenge the city needs to address.
“If you could just see your way to vote to give us the opportunity. It’s not locking us into place. All your vote will do is allow us to take the next step,” she said to McCardle. “I feel like our community has spoken loud and clear and told us over and over exactly what they want us to do. I don’t know what our job is here if it’s not to find a way to put their priorities in place.”
During the council’s discussion prior to coming to a decision, Barington pointed to the “strong momentum” the city has built over the past several years toward dredging as an in-lake solution and said halting the loan application would kill years of momentum and the future of the lake.
“If we say no tonight, everything 100% – in my mind – on Lake Mitchell is over. The topic is dead, and the lake is dead,” Barington said.
Algae in Lake Mitchell.
Smith painted a picture around the vote on the loan application as small step that would allow the city to entertain bids for the dredging project and see what rough costs are looking like, along with giving Friends of Firesteel – a local nonprofit that’s been raising funds for dredging – a clear direction on whether to continue its fundraising campaign.
“We’ll never know how much it will cost. We’ll never know how much we can raise, and we’ll never know how much we will lose in grants,” Smith said.
On the financial side of the project, Rice used the roughly $3 million the city spends each year on maintaining its parks as an example to compare what the long-term funding would look like over the next three decades.
Although he agreed the project would be a big undertaking for the city, Rice said it’s financially possible. He dubbed Lake Mitchell as the city’s biggest park that deserves maintenance.
“$3 million a year over 30 years is what we’re going to spend (for city park maintenance), which is $127 million in those 30 years just to maintain the current parks we have. If I can spend $127 million over 30 years on the parks, and I can’t spend over $25 or $30 million for the lake – which is the biggest park we have – to me we’re not thinking right,” Rice said.
In response to Rice’s comments on the financial impact of the project, McCardle highlighted the cost estimate City Administrator Stephanie Ellwein presented on June 12 was roughly $53 million not $25 to $30 million.
McCardle pointed to the magnitude of the $53 million price tag the project is estimated to cost as a reason it should be put to a public vote.
“I think if we want it done, it should be put on a ballot and let the whole town decide it, not just a couple people,” he said.
Smith explained that voting in favor of the application would allow residents opposed to the project an opportunity to submit a petition and refer it to a public vote.
The mechanical dredging project that was proposed to be funded primarily by the state loan was a product of a two-year study on the lake’s sediment and algae patterns. While the council invested over $1 million into preliminary dredging design work, the engineer firm’s multimillion-dollar dredging project was ultimately rejected in the end with Tuesday’s decision to kill the application.
Following the decision, Mayor Bob Everson said he will have to take a step back and rethink his approach on reducing the algae issues that have plagued the lake for decades.
“It disappoints me greatly, but we have to move on and rethink how we will go about this,” Everson said.
Community members, dredging supporters sound off
As the leader of a nonprofit organization that formed several years ago with the mission to raise funds for a future lake dredging project, Joe Kippes urged the council to make a decision that would have a positive impact on the lake and community for years to come.
Kippes sought to poke holes in arguments against dredging before the city makes more progress on reducing the phosphorus funneling into the lake via Firesteel watershed and said all the designs and recommendations have agreed that both dredging the lake and improving the watershed are needed collectively.
“If we choose to wait, the lake will continue to degrade. I’m hoping our council decides it’s a good time to get busy with this and fix our lake,” Kippes said.
Mike Vehle, a longtime lake resident and leader of Friends of Firesteel, characterized the council’s vote as “tough and transformative.”
“This is a tough vote. As a former legislator for 12 years, I understand what you’re going through. A former legislator told me do the right thing, you’ll sleep a lot better. When we talk about tough votes, sometimes it’s about money. Sometimes it’s about policy. Then there are those that can be transformative, and that’s what your vote today is about. It’s transformative for our city – restoring our lake,” Vehle said.
Vehle emphasized the price tag of dredging anytime down the road will only increase as inflation has seemingly by the day. He said the 3.25% interest rate that was attached to the $25 million loan won’t be that low ever again.
From the perspective of a local business leader and employer, Justin Luther said he frequently hears applicants speak about the importance of quality of life. And he believes Lake Mitchell is one of the city’s “most prized assets” that can provide the type of quality of life that will attract employees if the city takes action on cleaning the algae-laden body of water, which he dubbed as a “nuisance property.”
“What we have here is an asset. At the end of the day, if we don’t reinvest in our assets, we won’t be relevant five years from now. … People aren’t just going to come, you have to give them a reason to come,” Luther said, noting the lake is one amenity that could bring more prospective residents to Mitchell. “As I sit and watch the towns around us grow and add things in their communities, I think we’re behind. It scares me as a business owner. It scares me as a father. It scares me as a resident of Mitchell.”
Luther closed by saying if the project does not go forward, he believes it will never happen in his lifetime.
