Ballard's Water Bonds Go to Court
A taxpayer sued to stop Ballard from paying $8,500 for a private waterworks plant he called worthless—money voters had approved to build the city's own artesian wells.
WATER FIGHT AT BALLARD. Taxpayer Objects to Purchase of West Coast Company's Plant.
The water plant of Ballard is the subject of a suit in the superior court. John Shields yesterday commenced an action against the city, Matthew Dow, A. O. Thompson and O. W. Emerson, respectively as mayor, treasurer and clerk, charging that unless restrained the officers will issue a warrant to the West Coast Improvement Company for $8,500 in payment for an alleged water system.
The complaint recites that July 17, 1894, the council passed an ordinance to submit a proposition to bond the city and thereby build and maintain a system of water works, the source to be artesian or deep water tubular wells near the foot of Rainier Avenue. Under this ordinance a special election was held, and an issue of bonds authorized to the amount of $43,675; and the bonds having been negotiated, the treasurer is about to receive the proceeds during the present month. It is stated the council, without the passage of an ordinance, entered into the contract with the West Coast Improvement Company, agreeing to buy a system from the company and pay $8,500 for the same out of the bond issue.
The system contracted for is described as in no sense such a system as is contemplated by the ordinance providing for the bond issue, and to be wholly valueless. If the money is diverted for this purpose, the complaint states, the money will be diverted from its object and be squandered and wasted on worthless plants.
“If the money is diverted for this purpose ... the money will be diverted from its object and be squandered and wasted on worthless plants.”
Ballard was still its own city in 1895, and residents were fighting over whether to build a public water system or buy a private company's plant. The lawsuit's charge—that bond money would be squandered on a worthless facility—is the same argument Seattle still has about public utilities, contracts and who controls the water. The neighborhood's independent streak survives in its old downtown.
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