"Dirty" business

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin

The day after I was elected mayor this past April I was stopped out in the street by my neighbor come to congratulate me and share his satisfaction that I had won. “Now, you'll be my hero if you don't raise my taxes.” We both had a laugh at that not because I had uttered former

It wouldn't be prudent
to make such a promise

President George H.W. Bush's famous ironic one-liner, “Read my lips: no new taxes” in the run-up to the election (I hadn't); rather, we all know that if anything seems to defy the laws of gravity its the uncanny ability for taxes to rise. And up they go like a spray of helium-filled balloons no matter how hard municipal employees and representatives try and hold them down.

But did you know that right here in our town that Public Works Director Dan Knapp has a “dirty” little business going on that is actually making money for us instead of spending it? It's true. And the evidence for these “shady” goings-on sits like a small mountain outside the City Shop. There, like a miniature replica of the famed Matterhorn in Switzerland, is the gravel pile that while not gold sure makes us a pretty penny.

Okay, so it's not as tall as the Matterhorn but it's still the second biggest hill in town

And that wasn't the half of it

It works like this: a few years ago, with some help from some friends, we took out the old sidewalk leading up to our front door. It was cracked in multiple places and the earth was reclaiming much of it. Having dug it up, however, the debris had to go someplace and fortunately for us the “other” pile at the City Shop is the acceptable place to receive it. So a couple of trailer-loads later our now busted-up sidewalk lay among the assorted chunks of concrete and block gathered there deposited by local contractors and homeowners alike. Like the old shell game, we moved the mess in our front yard to the mess to the lee of the City Shop, making it their problem and not ours.

"Good" pile in the back, unprocessed concrete in front

We start with this...

...and we end up with what Dan calls "7/8 Minus"

But in the spirit of the old adage that one man's garbage is another man's gold, here's where Dan works magic. That pile of junk and old concrete looking like so much flotsam and jetsam that has been spat out of the maw of the earth is ground into gravel that officially is called “7/8 Minus”. During that process all the iron from the old rebar and wire within the cement is removed and shipped to Toy's Scrap & Salvage in Rice Lake to be recycled. They pay us to take all the iron filings from our old rock. As Dan deadpans it, “It beats going into a ditch around here.”

A certain grade of "gold" is in this hill

What's left is the “mini-Mattahorn” mountain of gravel lying directly north of the City Shop, a product that currently is going for $7/ton and sold to contractors and surrounding townships as well as to any individual with a dump truck. Mark Edwards, a crop farmer who lives in town and presently serves on the City Council, is not afraid to tell anyone who asks him how he feels about what we're selling: “The crushing size of the gravel (3/4” grade) just sticks together better and speaking as someone who is a customer myself, it just does a better job of providing a good base. Besides, we used to pay someone to truck our old concrete to a site to be crushed into gravel and then buy it back from them to be used on our own streets. Now we're making money off it and I think that's a better deal.” I agree.

But the deal gets even better because where does the money go? Dan puts it all in his outlay accounts to save for the replacement of new equipment. “My wish is that one day all our equipment will be off the tax rolls simply because we make enough off the sale of our rock to pay for them outright.” Now that's your city's tax's dollars at work doing what they can to keep our bottom line as low as practical. And Dan, we thank you.