The Manhole Cover Has Been Lifted

That title was Lori's response to last night's Common Council meeting. Though the cover has been lifted, we are still a long, long way from knowing all that's underground, including what may or may not be acts of city negligence. State law and court decisions provide extreme cover for cities as regards these matters, so absent some kind of independent third-party investigation we will probably never know the truth.

We heard some heart wrenching stories last night--and some justifiably angry ones--from citizens damaged by sewer backup. Ms. Carol Christianson's statement was especially eloquent because she reminded the council of its obligations to pursue justice and act ethically. [What a world it would be if the council and staff could expend half the amount of energy looking for ways to help these people as we do trying to find ways to fund an EAA exhibit hall or get the Akcess project off the ground.].

I realize that the the easiest thing for the common council to do on these claims is to mimic what common councils have always done: rubber stamp the insurance company decision. I call that the "Pontius Pilate" approach in that it only requires that we wash our hands of the matter and send the claimants off to the "mercy" of circuit court. Of course, as we know from Mr. Tweedale of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, claimants rarely if ever prevail in ciruit court so that it hardly a solution. Because the system is weighted so heavily against claimants, the common council is literally the court of last resort unless we look for ways to make the process more fair.

Unfortunately, none of the speakers were in a position to be able to establish negligence, which is why it was extremely difficult to vote to allow the claims. Still, I think the Council did the right thing in creating a situation in which people would come to argue for their claims because it forced the council and staff to come face-to-face with victims of a problem that is at least in part the result of many years of bad planning and failure to rebuild an old infrastructure. We were not able to allow claims, it is true, but at least there seems to be close to unanimous agreement that:

*The insurance claims process needs to be overhauled. At the very least, our claim form should provide claimants with clear information about what they need to show in order to prevail. I provided an example from Ann Arbor, Michigan as an example of what such a form would look like.
*Problems with the storm water system need to be treated as urgent. I think a good start would be for the city staff to provide citizens with answers to all of the questions on the maintenace checklist for sanitary sewer systems.

More difficult is trying to get a majority of councilors to agree that some kind of indepenent claim investigation process is needed. Just about all of the speakers last night understood why it was difficult to allow the claims absent proof of city negligence. What they could not understand is why the Council is resistant to looking for a way to get an independent, third-party source to investigate what the problems are.

So the manhole cover has been lifted, but only a tiny bit. We've got a long, long way to go before citizens can feel confident that the process is fair and the city is truly committed to addressing infrastructure issues that have been neglected for many years.