Again, Surface Water Management is pleading poverty, this time as an excuse for the elimination of the Stillaguamish Clean Water District and its Advisory Board.  They claim it saves $480,000 a year to “consolidate” the surface-water fee areas, by virtue of “administrative efficiency.”  

One has to laugh.  With a $39 million-dollar budget, SWM (pronounced “swim”) has begun hiring a dozen new staffers, with salaries and benefits ranging from $80,000 to $100,000 each.  That comes to twenty times the purported annual savings from consolidation. 

And speaking of "overhead," SWM's employee benefits alone skim off 37 cents of every ratepayer dollar, before anyone even shows up for work.

The real change is that SWM would for the first time get all of the $90/parcel fee in the Stilly basin.

These facts are known only because of the Advisory Board, which would explain why SWM is so anxious to not have one.  Consolidation fulfills their long-sought dream:  All the money and no oversight.