NFL, Wayward Pines, City Council

Well, the NFL has made sweeping changes in rules which will effect games dramatically!

If you are going for a 2 point conversion and you fumble the ball backwards and then because of your giant butter fingers both teams keep fumbling the ball 98 yards in the other direction and then the original team falls on the ball in the end zone 98 yards from there they started the defensive team gets a 1 point safety!   

A game could end with a score of 6 to 1. 

But the big news is that instead of kicking an extra point from the 2 yard line where there is a 99% possibility that you will make it.  You will NOW have to kick it from the 25 yard line where the completion percentage drops all the way down to 97%.  Maybe higher since you will have all the time in the world and will be from the middle of the field!  

WOW - it's going to be crazy!!  

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Wayward Pines - If you did not catch the 1st episode last week they are playing #1 at 7:00 and #2 at 8:00.  Pretty good. M. Night Shyamalan says there is a beginning, middle AND ending and everything will be answered.  I really liked the show!  Sort of Twin Peaky, Lost-ish but with an actual thought out before hand plot. 

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City Council.  

Many people are surprised when they find out that when your sewer clogs so dramatically that the road needs to be dug up, that YOU pay for road repair. Yea - you have to take out a $5000 bond, find a plumber that not only fixes your sewer BUT will repair the road and it's all on YOU!  

95% of all towns have an ordinance in place that says the home owner is responsible for the sewer line up to where it enters the sewer system WHICH is typically in the middle of the street.    

Water is different because there is a valve at the property line so there is a firm dividing line. Not so with sewers. 

WELL - Thanks to Alderman Thom and if the votes from the rest of council go through that is about to change.  

I contacted about 14 other towns and asked them what they do and there was another list that was presented to us of about 20 more and it was about 95% having homeowners spring for the road repair.

WTF!!  

Just because everybody else does it that way does not mean it's the right way.  There are many pros and cons. For instance, that is the price you pay for buying an older home. Personally that is exactly one of the reasons I would never buy an older home. I don't want all that headache of fixing things. Why should I have to pay for someone else to save money. That is the risk you take when you buy an older home. 

In fact that was my original thought on this subject. If the homeowner does not pay then it falls on everyone else to pay for it. SOMEONE has to pay right?

HOWEVER - this is something very few people even know about!!  When I was looking into this, my main question was, how often does this happen in a city.  It seems on a bad year maybe 5 times in Columbus. 

So my feeling was that the city can absorb this $25,000 (I have never been able to pin down how much this costs on average - it's like a secret) without too much pain while a home owner would have to, all of a sudden, come up with $5,000 to $10,000 on their own which in MY case - would totally blow my budget. 

Yea - why should I have to pay for someones else's problem, but then again why should THEY have to pay for fixing a road that they don't even own. Of course the home owner pays for fixing roads already sort of  so there is THAT argument. 

I feel it's sort of an insurance policy. I'm not totally on board with the new ordinance in question, perhaps 55% on board.  I will have to play a new yearly tax for something I will probably never have to worry about but it will help others so . . . it's a good thing.  

No one knows how much this will impact the average tax payer.  It's an unanswered question but if it helps people purchase older homes in older neighborhoods its a good thing.   

Raising city taxes responsibly  :-)  

NOTE - I am for this even though it sounds like I might not be,  There are a LOT of pros and cons but in case  I feel  the pros beat out the cons.  If there were  LOT of these cases I might not be so for it.  

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The street lighting design looks like it will go through even though some numbers were mis-spoken in the presentation. The final vote has not been taken but I'm caustically (LOL) cautiously optimistic.   

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New city website is starting to get traction. I really hate one company and their design as I believe they are not intune with how Joe Public looks at websites and the other I felt was MUCH more useful.  Images are good but they should never be the main thing for a city website.  City websites are about content, not photos.  Photos should be used to augment content, not a main theme. We shall see what is presented to us.
   

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OH OH - lots more STOP signs coming your way.  In the last four years their have been 16 accidents in this area so new STOP signs will be installed on S Lewis Street, S Charles St and a few on Hibbard St.  Don't worry, they will be installed with traffic flow in mind so it would take a half hour to go from on end of a street to the next.  

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Oddfellows River Clean up will be June 20th.

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The base of the Columbus water tower beautification project will begin this weekend in preparation for the new paint job the tower we will get early this summer. The current plan will look something like this. 

 KIDDING KIDDING 

Actually. the plan is to have the tower painted something like the Waunakee Water Tower.

But instead of Waunekee on the side we will have

Which if you think about it makes much more sense.  The blue on the bottom side actually has a reason. With a white tower that bottom side gets dirty and this hide the dirt.  The tower painted silver has been in place since the early 70s??  It's time for a change.

I TRIED to have Columbus be a little more forward thinking but we are stuck with our own backward thinking ways.  The "it would cost too much"  excuse!!!   But this would make a statement would it not?

Speaking of Water and Light.  Many of you have noticed that Tower Drive has a new bump in the road.

It was decided that with 151/73 bridge being smoothed out our quota of bumpy roads was shrinking so there needed to be more road repair.

ACTUALLY this was to bring new water to that area for new homes and more importantly this fixed a small logistical problem in our water delivery system to the area with more redundancy.

There was a problem where if a water main was, for some reason, cut off there was no satisfactory backup in case of a major fire at the Hospital. This creates a solid loop and alternate source.  

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Weather - we made it!!!  Highs in the 70's for at least the next 10 days, rain on Sunday.

Cheers
Rod