Accelerating the Stormwater Management Master Plan -- Dollars and Votes

On October 13, Rosemary Argus will propose that the Stormwater Management Master Plan be accelerated to be completed by 2013 as opposed to the current schedule of 2017 completion. So as I see it, the issue will come down to Dollars and Votes.
Let's talk Dollars.
During a meeting (Oct. 1, 2009) attended by over 100 8th Ward residents, Councilman Argus attempted to facilitate a discussion about the Dollars issue, "can we raise revenue via a water bill or property tax increase?" She did not have the "how much" at hand; but if she did, I believe it would have been a non-issue. So how much revenue are we talking about?

• There are approximately 23,000 households (comments welcomed from authoritative sources on this number. )
• A presentation delivered (City of Des Plaines Jon Duddles P.E.) at this Oct 1 meeting estimated that the city will need $6,603,881 over 4 Fiscal Years (2010-2013) to accelerate the Flood Control CIP. Doing the math, that is:
  
• $287/household (over 4 years)
• $72/household/year

Note that the above amounts will actually be lower because the businesses in our community will bear some of the expense.

These dollars do not seem exorbitant to improve our flooding infrastructure. So raising this kind of revenue per household seems, I think, very doable -- $72/tax bill; or on a bi-monthly water bill, $12/bill. (Comments and math corrections welcomed).

Now let's talk Votes.
Looking at a table of the Stormwater Management Master Plan that lays out the yearly expenditures to complete the Plan in 4 rather than 8 years, the plan would have improvements in five out of the eight wards (Wards 2,3,5,7,8). All of a sudden there should be five out of eight Councilmen voting YES, since it positively affects their constituency.

A$72/ year increase to either my tax bill or water bill to help Des Plaines mitigate the flooding risk is a worthwhile investment with far-reaching implications.