The Cost of Taking Care of (your) Business

Tuesday night at the regularly scheduled meeting of the Newton, NC city council we had a presentation given to council by our Public Works director Dusty Wentz. Mr. Wentz outlined the operations of the Wastewater Treatment Plant(WTP). He had several maps and diagrams showing the ins and outs of the Wastewater Treatment Plant. He later made several other presentations that involved budget ordinance amendments and approvals of money for the WTP. 

It was an interesting night that showed that many of our tax dollars go to places where the general public may not see evidence of the monies being spent. In the past 5 years the city has spent $959,352 on 17 projects at the WTP. We approved another half a million in dollars last night. All of this is to keep the WTP up and running and in compliance with both state and federal regulations. 

There's nothing exciting about spending these dollars. They don't really cause people to exclaim in admiration about the great job the city is doing. Most people will never know. They just want their toilets to flush when they push the handle. But these things have to be done. And these are the kinds of projects that are approved at many meetings. 

Sometimes we get to approve projects that the public sees. Things like the Downtown Streetscape Revitalization project are nice. People look at the work we've done downtown and feel a sense of pride. But even with that project, most of the money spent was underground. Almost 70% of the cost was in updating failing infrastructure that most people will never see. We have many places around the city where this is the case.

This city staff and this council is working hard to update and upgrade many aspects of our city. But we didn't get to this place overnight and it isn't going to be solved overnight either. I'm sure we'll have growing pains along the way. But I know that we are building on our brilliant legacy and heading toward a bright future.



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