The Mayor Takes a Stand

The Mayor of St. Paul addressed the City Council members and urged them to reconsider their decision to contract with a private company to construct and operate a water system for St. Paul.

“I am opposed,” he said, “…because of the costly and vexatious experience of other cities who have tried the experiment of employing Companies to supply their inhabitants with water…”

“In my judgment,” the Mayor continued, “…you might as well farm out the construction of your streets, your levees, and even the business of the City Government to a private corporation, as the construction of Water Works, and the supply of the City with water…The price which you, in fact, agree to pay the ‘Company’ for a supply of water, if provided for in accordance with your resolution, will become so exorbitant as to deserve the strong appellation of PUBLIC PLUNDER.”

The resolution they were about to pass, he said, “is nothing else than an ingenious device to obtain a new mortgage on the city.” It would create “such an odious monopoly” that it would “enable the ‘Company’ to make water an expensive beverage, and water rents an oppressive burden which the poorer classes will be unable to bear.”

Instead, the Mayor urged, the City should construct its own water works, which could be done for far less than a private company would extract.

After hearing the Mayor’s presentation, the Council voted to reconsider its resolution. Some years later, after other attempts at supplying city water through private operators, the city took possession of the existing water works and they have been publicly owned and operated since that time.

The date of the Mayor’s message? June 21, 1859. His name? Daniel Robertson. Maybe they should put up a plaque in his memory at the Water Utility.