Lake Herman Sanitary District

Back at our September meeting, a resident asked how the Lake Herman Sanitary District's budget reserve compared to the reserve balancces carried by other governmental entities. I just noticed that the Madison City Commission agenda for November 30, 2009, includes on pages 13 and 14 a breakdown of city reserves as of October 2009. Last month, the city held $4.15 million in designated reserves and $1.37 million in restricted reserves.

The Lake Herman Sanitary District budget process for fiscal year 2010 is complete. At Wednesday's meeting, the board voted to maintain the $2000 tax assessment that it has levied for the past three years.

We head into our Wednesday budget meeting with a little better picture of the scope of sanitary district powers. Input from counsel and from the state Attorney General's office makes it pretty clear that sanitary district powers are limited to wastewater issues (see attachment below). We lack the authority to act on some of the qater quality issues and project ideas brought up at our last meeting.

Some say no news is good news. In this case, the news is that there is no news:

The big question at our meeting last night (8/19) was just what sort of projects the sanitary district can undertake. When I first joined the board in 2006, I had hoped we might be able to put district funds to use on water quality projects. However, state law (SDCL 34A-5-26) defines a pretty strict set of powers for sanitary districts.