<sigh> here we go, with this tired argument once again.
I had seen some charts that posted numbers for all the local municipalities, but you'll forgive me if I'm too lazy to search long enough to find it. But this sums it up nicely. The numbers are a few years old, but the fundamental point is still relevant.
"Taking all this into account, it’s ironic that one of the primary issues driving the regionalization effort is the cry that suburbanites are being gouged by the City of Detroit. What many customers don’t realize is that much of their bill has nothing to do with rates charged by the Detroit. Take, for example, the city of Warren, which has been a lead advocate of a takeover.
Effective January 2002, Detroit charged Warren $5.86 per thousand cubic feet of water, equal to about 7,500 gallons. Warren in turn charged its residents $13.14 for that water, a 125 percent increase; that’s according to the 2002-2003 Water Department report on budgets and rates prepared for the city by Black and Veatch, an international engineering consulting firm that specializes in water-rate analysis.
Most cities that buy Detroit water double, triple and even quadruple the water charges to their residents. The average markup is 146 percent on water rates and 168 percent on sewer rates
. That means most of the money collected in the region for water bills stays in the local communities that bill the residents. It does not go to Detroit."
http://www2.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=4268
For all the LBP's and Fouts' out there, their arugment would hold much more water [[pardon the pun) if they supported more mass regionalism. Not just in the areas which can be viewed as a financial asset, but those which are liabilities as well. Let them share the cost of maintaining facilites for the region's homeless and mentally ill. Let them share in the cost of demolishing homes which their residents abandoned, for others to deal with. Let them share the costs of cleaning up brownfields, left by the industrial giants of the past which have since moved on to greener pastures. Let them share the costs of paying generations of retirees which collect pensions but have since moved to suburban communities.
Also, when are they going to petition to take over the gas & electric service? How about comcast? Their bills are mulitple times that of the water bill. And they increase seemingly every year as well. I have much less consternation when writing my $40 check for my water bill, as compared to the $160 check to Comcast.