i dont ask much

but i ask this: if you live in lincoln, get out today and go vote for the Stormwater bond. basically this bond will keep my job (water resource engineer) secure for another couple of years. if it doesn't pass, well i just might have to get a job as a newspaper boy and throw newspapers through your windows. or else ill become an ice cream man but ill turn the freezer way down so all your kids will walk in the house crying with dripping bon-pops and orange push-ups.

okay. maybe the threats are not a good idea. why dont you just read this article from the lincoln journal star, here are some excerpts:

The rains run off driveways and parking lots, collecting in streets, sewers and streams. Preventing these growing currents from flooding homes takes engineering, and that isn’t cheap. Neither is maintaining, improving or replacing storm structures. As it does every few years, the City of Lincoln is asking taxpayers to pay for its flood protection. Voters will be asked to approve a $8.5 million bond issue Tuesday to finance 27 specific stormwater improvement projects.

If approved, the city would issue general obligation bonds, sort of like IOUs, and levy a property tax to pay off the debt over 20 years. Approval would add $4.53 per year to taxes on a $100,000 home. (me - thats nothing people, ill buy you dinner to even it out!)

The 27 projects are distributed throughout the city. The money would rebuild undersized storm sewers, stabilize eroding creekbeds, create basins to collect water and develop drainage areas that filter runoff and keep pollutants out of creeks and lakes.

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The city puts a stormwater bond issue on the ballot every few years. Voters have approved eight such bond issues since 1983. Some have questioned why bonds are used instead of general funds. Others have wondered why bond issues are proposed so often. City Finance Director Don Herz said that under existing laws the bond method is the most fair.

“Basically what you’re doing is building a capital asset,” he said. Adding stormwater improvement costs to the city’s annual budget would cause the burden to be shouldered entirely by the people who live here now. A bond issue spreads the cost to include everyone who will live here in the next 20 years and benefit from the improvements, he said.

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In some states, cities charge a stormwater utility fee instead.

Property is evaluated based on how much it contributes to runoff. Laws that would permit those types of fees have not been passed here, Herz said.