Have you ever experienced one of those situations where you looked upon the landscape and said, “Wait a minute, this seems too easy. There’s either a catch or it’s a trap,”? This was what ran through my mind last week when I attended the Rotan City Council meeting, where I had a functional blueprint of an editorial framed in my mind before anyone considered adjournment.
It was a surreal situation, like an MIT professor telling their senior quantitative economics students there is only one question on the final exam, get it right and you get an A, miss it and you retake the course. Then the professor writes 12 + 12 = ? on the chalkboard and leaves the room.
It can’t be that simple, can it? Oh, but it is... But that doesn’t make it easy to swallow, and I’m not sure what fascinates me more, how much the city is willing to feed its citizens or how much of it they’re willing to eat.
For readers that begin this newspaper with this editorial, let me first refer you to the brief, front-page article about the glowing financial position of the City of Rotan, and how the council has reluctantly — but needfully — increased its water and sewer rates to help balance operational losses.
It would appear from reading that article that Rotan is in great shape, that is until you drive through town. So, before you go shouting “Fake News” like a spoiled politician, allow me to explain how the article is correct, even if the results are wrong.
The article states the roughly $300,000 loss in water and sewer operations was easily offset with reserve funds, and even after covering the shortfall, the city retained two years' worth of operating surplus in the bank. Good job bean counters, however, it doesn’t take an MIT economics graduate to tell you that if all you do is continue to amass a debt while doing nothing more than making interest payments, you’re going to be screwed.
Now, Rotan’s debt is not one of accounting. The city excels at calculating after all. No, the city’s growing deficit is one of infrastructure, and its growth, I fear, will be catastrophic.
In November 2022 this was the headline and lead:
Council considers cost to repair aging water towers
The Rotan City Council reviewed a recent inspection of the city’s water storage tanks earlier this month, which explained the poor condition of most of the units and recommended repairs that could cost the city nearly $450,000 to complete.
We reported on this same issue in 2019, when former Director of Public Works Rodney Denton urged the council to take action — then projecting around $250K to do the job — and recommended a 10-year plan. Since then, no plan, no action, and the towers continue to deteriorate.
You may not be thirsty yet... but you will be.
In fairness, tackling a massively decaying water infrastructure is a tall order. How about we focus on something smaller? Potholes perhaps... and for a city that only collects tax dollars instead of spending them, road conditions make driving in Rotan more like traveling the backroads in a war-torn village than a city with over two million tucked away in their mattress.
For as long as I have been editor of this paper, Rotan has faced three continuous issues: water, potholes, and stray dogs. In almost 10 years, the council has not achieved a single solution to any of them. In the city’s defense, it got close to addressing potholes. Until it was going to require accountability of work, then someone hauled in the sails, and council members never seemed to notice they were adrift.
In 2021, the city purchased a street patching machine after witnessing it in action, repairing a large pothole at the intersection of Florence Ave. and McArthur St. Two years later, that original patch is holding just fine, despite the new potholes forming around it.
Unfortunately, the city still has no way to store the emulsion needed to make future repairs because the $1,500 expense to run electricity to the storage tank was more expensive than officials expected. Patching machine, storage tank, and electricity to power it... less than $125K.
And while it might be an insult to injury at this point, I think it is also fair to point out that the month before the pothole patching demonstration, Rotan ISD began demolition of its first building. In the same timeframe that the city hasn’t got its pothole machine operating, contractors constructed a gymnasium, cafeteria, band hall, and library.
Although perhaps there is no reason to complain. After all, if the water stops flowing and the rain starts falling, the potholes could be a new water reservoir... that is if the stray dogs don’t get there first.