Minutes - Council - 06/25/1984 - Joint Public Hearing with Planning and Zoning Commission

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estimate is that it would cost approximately $11,000,000. I would challenge firms like Waste Managment to come up with another way of doing business with solid waste than putting it in the ground. I am firmly committed and believe that we have a County Board getting behind it to do anything with that waste but put it in the ground where we can't see it and can't control it. We have formed an abatement team. We are looking at almost every way possible and that does not mean that you and I are going to get our dollars back by turning it into energy. I have reached the point where I am willing to look at my neighbor and myself and say that it is going to cost $30-$40 a ton to burn it and scrub the air; we can watch it there but we can't watch it once we get it into the ground. I appreciate the fact that you want to put $15,000,000 on paper and Mr. Goodrich has gone from beauty parlors to landfills tonight, and some of my best friends are attorneys, but when it's on paper and we have the world as full of attorneys as we do you're not going to get $15,000,000 in your hand by snapping your fingers when you have a problem; you and I are going to be in court again trying to clean up the mess. Arnie Cox - This just doesn't affect residences around the landfill; I have a business in the area and am acquainted with the problems associated with the landfill. Some good has come out of this. After much problems in the area years ago, Waste Management has taken initiative with the cooperation of the City. Something many of you may not realize is that when the roads were bad on Sunfish Lake Blvd., we insisted, and they did pay for the right of way for $28,000. They also did not create the original boundaries and perimeter of that landfill. A lot of the problems that were created are not their own, however, they have been made to live within reasonable rules in regard to it. Mr. Otter from Waste Management told me that he wanted to be part of this community; 64 acres was donated along the Rum River and we are in the process of developing a park there and I called on Mr. Otter and he donated $40,000 worth of time and equipment preparing a park for us not on the landfill site. They have improved the landfill operation and if you had to do business with people in the landfill business, and we have to whether we want to or not here in Ra~sey, Waste Management does come through on some of their promises. In 1967, when the Attorney General ruled that a non-incorporated municipality has no jurisdiction to stop a landfill, we have had some real problems since then and nobody has fought any harder for the controls on that landfill than I have. There are about 11,000 people living in Ramsey and that present site, as it exists today, could financially bankrupt the community. Eighty-four percent of our tax revenue base is from the residential population. Analyze that and you live in one damn poor community, whether you like it or not. When you have a community with 16% commercial tax base versus 84% residential tax base, you have a real problem. The problems that could generate, as it stands today whether they expand or not, could financially bankrupt this community. As far as contracts with Anoka, they don't mean a damn thing and you ought to realize that by now. ~e had a contract with Anoka that in the Fall of 1981 the landfill would be turned over to the City of Ramsey and we would have some Council/P & Z Public Hearing Page 21 of 23