By Tony Brockmeyer
State Representative Tom Dempsey (R), whose district is mainly the City of St. Charles north of Interstate 70, added a last minute amendment to Senate Bill 462 in the closing days of the 2005 legislative session. The bill, if signed into law by Governor Blunt, would force the City of St. Charles to treat sewage from a private sewer firm outside of the City limits for at least the next two years.
Immediately City Administrator Allan Williams pointed out flaws in the legislation to local elected officials. One of these is that if East Central Missouri (ECM), the private sewer firm in question, stopped paying its bill to the City, the City would be restricted in shutting them off for two years under Dempsey’s proposal. “Essentially what the Administrator told me is the City would have to provide thousands of county residents with free sewer service for two years and pass those costs on to City residents if ECM refused to pay their bills,” explained Council President Rory Riddler.
Currently ECM has no contract with the City of St. Charles. The City explored the option of buying ECM out, but abandoned that option when it was discovered how bad the sewer lines are that serve ECM customers. “We would have taken on a tremendous liability for our citizens and customers had we done that,” explained Councilman Mark Brown, a member of the Council Public Utilities Committee, adding,” St. Peters bought a portion of ECM’s service area west of here and has had constant complaints and problems.”
It was discovered ECM did not have a current contract with the City when developer Tom Hughes began hooking up new homes in his subdivision development at St. Andrews. The City had attempted to stop any more homes from being connected until the issue was resolved. While the legal issue has been between ECM and the City, Hughes has been highly critical in the press of Council members he actively opposed for re-election as out to oppose his project. Hughes spent thousands of dollars in the April 2004 elections both opposing and supporting Council candidates. Recently he announced he was helping to set up a legal defense fund for Mayor Patricia York, raising money to pay the Mayor’s legal bills over her signing of a contract with Express Scripts.
The State legislation would only affect the City of St. Charles. “This is special interest legislation, trying to force the citizens of St. Charles to serve an ailing sewer system outside our corporate boundaries. In my opinion it has serious legal flaws. I just don’t see why the State of Missouri needs to be meddling in contracts on behalf of a private profit making company to the detriment of the taxpayers,” said Councilman and Public Utilities Committee member Dottie Greer.
