Fridley Quits Six Cities Water Management Organization

The Fridley City Council voted Monday to leave a water-management organization that the city has belonged to—with five other cities—since 1983. 

Blaine and Coon Rapids have already opted to leave the Six Cities Water Management Organization, Public Works Director James Kosluchar said. "They don't see it as functional," he told the council.

That leaves the Six Cities organization with only four cities, despite its name: besides Fridley, are Columbia Heights, Spring Lake Park and Hilltop. 

Kosluchar said that Six Cities was coming under pressure from the state Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR, or "Bowser") to improve its state-mandated management of water resources. He noted that the organization lacks levy authority—as well as a staff or office. 

City Council Member Ann Bolkcom said representatives of BWSR were "pretty stern," "blunt," and "disappointed" in Six Cities' performance at a meeting in October. 

"The beauty of this [change]," Bolkcom told the council, is that it will boost chances for a solution to erosion problems along Glen Creek. Membership in the Coon Creek district will help property owners there get a pipe installed to carry increased flow from developed land upstream, she said after the meeting.

New Groups
The two sections of Fridley that have been part of Six Cities will instead ask to join neighboring water groups, the city council decided Monday.

A northern section will join the Coon Creek Watershed District, which now contains parts of five cities: Andover, Blaine, Columbus, Coon Rapids and Ham Lake.  

A southern section of Fridley will join the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization, which now contains parts of St. Anthony, Minneapolis, Lauderdale and St. Paul. 

Both new water groups "kind of welcomed" the idea of Fridley joining, Kosluchar said. 

Fridley's midsection is part of the Rice Creek Watershed District, a group less interested in adding new portions of Fridley. "Rice Creek wasn't interested in us," Kosluchar said, citing the Rice Creek district's "pretty focused mission."

Fee Changes
Property owners in the two sections of Fridley that have belonged to the Six Cities organization for nearly 30 years can expect to see a change in the water-management line item on their property tax statements.

Estimates Kosluchar provided show potential increases ranging from about 50 percent in the Coon Creek district to as much as 500 percent in the Mississippi group. The owner of a Fridley residential property with a taxable value of $250,000 in one of the two Six Cities sections could expect to pay around $11.84 in 2011. 

The same property in the Coon Creek district might pay $18.06. In the Mississippi area, the fee could be as high as $58.20.  

But the tax increases expected to result from the city shifting its water-management groups don't require voters' approval, City Attorney Fritz Knaak told the council.

A vote is only necessary if the increase is to a City of Fridley fee, Knaak said, and an assessment for a water agency is "not that kind of fee."