Other entities should contribute to flood protection
One can’t really blame the City of Minot for the pressure that the flood protection plan is contributing to budget challenges. After all, for years, Minot residents have asserted that flood protection is their number one priority. Local officials have, then, responded as local officials should and heard and reacted to the desires of the taxpaying public.
However, over time, financial and other conditions on the ground change, prompting the need to make alterations to plans, regardless of the efficacy of and support for an initial plan.
Such appears to be the case today.
Minot’s half penny of sales tax obligation has grown to 78 percent of a penny while other cities and counties in the Souris River Basin don’t contribute. The optics so far from the project might support this as entirely reasonable. After all, work done so far on the project has been within Minot. Soon the project shifts to outside city limits and to places throughout the basin. As configured now, Minot would continue to pick up the local component of the project’s overall tab.
As regional economic hub, there is no realistic way for the project to get done without Minot contributing the bulk of the local share. However, that doesn’t mean that other stakeholders in the flood protection project shouldn’t participate.
In fact, they should.
Ward County has mildly signaled that it would possibly be willing to re-route its half-penny of sales tax currently funding construction projects to flood protection when its projects are complete. Yes, that is a couple of years off, but the project is a generational initiative.
Other counties should contribute as well. Yes, relative to Minot’s share, this would not be a huge sum of money. But it would alleviate some of the pressure on Minot’s budget and would engage others that benefit from the project.
It only seems fair.