Folsom Prison Pays No Sewer Fees

I just heard that the Prison (meaning both the old Folsom Prison and the new California State Prison at Folsom) sends 27 million gallons of sewage per month through our sewer system but pays nothing. Zilch.

Compare to our 100% sewer fee hike.

If the Prison were to pay what other large users do (commercial rates), they would have been paying $10,000 per month, and after this April's rate increase, would be required to pay $21,000 per month.

I am outraged! Jim Karris brought this up at the Feb 27th City Council meeting and so far hasn't gotten an adequate response from the City. Kerri Howell is looking into it but he thinks she's going on vacation and so won't have a definitive answer anytime soon.

Apparently, the city struck some sweetheart deal with the Prison over 20 years ago whereby the prison only paid $200 per month. Then about 1 1/2 years ago, for some reason, the City stopped billing them altogether and they haven't paid anything at all since then. What do you think the City would do to me if I stopped paying my sewer bill?

It seems to me that when ever our city deals with the state, we get the short end of the stick. We 're losing $500,000 per year using prison labor to recylce our trash, we can't operate the jail profitably and got into a lawsuit with the state when they wanted to audit that operation. If we're going to sue the state, why not sue them for failure to pay their sewer bill???

I just don't get it. Why should residents and business be required to pay for the improvements & added capacity that's needed when a large user pays nothing?

I'll follow up with Jim and also with Kerri Howell. Let me know if anyone else out there has any info or thoughts.

Val---and all----This just shows how some of the Folsom city officials operate! Hire more people at the highest salaries for total inefficiency then come back to the sucker citizens when there is not enough money.

I just wrote a check for the 2nd month of sewer etc. increase.

THIS IS WHY THERE HAS TO BE A REVISED CITY CHARTER SO THAT THERE IS A DOUBLE CHECK ON ALL OPERATIONS AND THE TAXPAYERS ARE INFORMED BEFORE ACTIONS ARE TAKEN.

I was at that meeting and a medal should be awarded by all of us to Jim Karris for bringing this to our attention as well as TO THE ATTENTION OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RUNNING US!!!!!

"The mayor and council person who have been around for more than 2 years have "overlooked" this outrage. IT WAS ON THEIR WATCH THAT FOLSOM STOPPED COLLECTING FROM THE PRISON!

There would have been people drawing salary in the departments in charge of this. They came up with the recycling fiasco but this was pushed under yet another table!!!

When are the rest of us going to get behind people like Val, Folsom Fish, Bob Giacometti, Jin Karris and the others who try to tell us the way THINGS REALLY ARE!!!

EVERYONE IN THIS CITY SHOULD BE OUTRAGED!!!

GET ON YOUR COMPUTERS OR PHONES AND START SENDING MESSAGES TO THOSE WHO TELL US WHAT GREAT FINANCIAL SHAPE fOLSOM IS IN!!!!

If you let people run a city this way then Saddam and Ben Laden will have no proplem getting rid of the people in this country!!!!

Minor correction to my prior post. Kerri Howell is not on vacation (or if she is, she's reading her e-mails and responding). Anyway, she's looking into the situation--has spoken with Utilities and Finance; they were supposed to get back to her Monday but have not. She has left messages reminding them they owe her an answer.

She also said the ony historical info she has is that there was a meter problem a year and a half ago.

In her e-mail to me she promised to find out whether the meter issue was resolved, what we are charging CDC for sewer fees, and if the charges appear to be lower than other commercial users, what can be done to raise the fee, and to get back to me and Jim as soon as she has an answer, hopefully in a few days.

Sounds like Kerri's doing her job; can't say the same for staff.

thank you for the update - hopefully the city can get to the bottom of this!!!

Go the City's website--they've addressed the issue there. Got some answers but some questions remain. ie. what does the agreement say about rates, what's the term of the agreement (how long does it go, does it expire ever, etc.), do we get interest on the fees that are going unpaid for the past two years, for starters. Stay tuned.

It is on the city's website (see link on front page of MyFolsom), however I got a couple of emails from people who couldn't download the file... here is a link for you folks who were interested in seeing it.

http://www.myfolsom....rison-Sewer.htm

Here is an update on the sewer fee situation. I never could get an answer from Ken Payne as to the total monthly flow through our system. Then one day I went to the City's website and found a topic called miscellanous statistics. There were the flow figures. Our daily ave is 7.3 MGD. Multiply that by 30 and you get 219 MGM. If you take the prison's flow of 27 MGM and divide those two numbers you get the prison's contribution to our monthy flow which turns out to be 12.3%. Our monthly billings our $110,000. If you took 12.3% times that number you would get a monthly fee of $13,500. The City's now says that they are billing the CDC $1,500 per month. The assistant City Manager didn't say if the State was paying that bill. The Prison is being under-billed approx $ 12,000 per month. It doesn't seem like this is a big deal to the City. I say $144,000 a year is a big deal and I won't let the City Council brush this under the carpet.

Get it on the agenda and then let us know when it will be going
to be on there. That way we can all attend the meeting.

Cal