What's a Sanitary District for, Anyway?

I've been having an interesting conversation with Charlie Stoneback, a fellow member of the Lake Herman Sanitary District board, and our lawyer and local expert on sanitary districts, Jerome Lammers . (We'd be chatting with the third member, Lawrence Dirks, as well, but he doesn't have e-mail.) After the very sound public drubbing of our proposal to expand the district, we've been wondering just what the sanitary district is supposed to be doing. Our thoughts so far:

1. Maybe we ought to dissolve the district. If residents aren't pushing for a central sewer system, and if our neighbors don't support expanding the district to a population base that would make a system feasible, then why have the district at all? Right now, the district seems to be little more than a small-scale income redistribution scheme, transferring money (a whopping $15-$50 a year) from taxpayers pockets to our insurance company, our lawyer, the newspaper, and the trustees' own pockets ($50 a meeting). Dissolve the district, let folks reconstitute it someday when there's a real groundswell of support for building a central sewer.
   
2. Of course, reconstituting the district from scratch would impose some extra costs in the future. Maybe instead of completely shutting down, we could just put the district in hibernation mode: hold a pro forma meeting once a year, assess no taxes, and wait for that groundswell.
3. Then again, why be wienies? Lammers says all the sanitary districts he's worked with have encountered anti-tax, anti-government factions who change their tune once they have the wonder of a nice central sewer system. Gutsy politicians would push ahead, seek funding sources, and make it happen.
4. Of course, I still don't buy the line that central sewer is always better than septic tanks. Maintain your system, pump it out regularly, and you get 20-30 years of service from an elegant system with no moving parts. Instead of remaining fixated on a remote future possibility, maybe the district could step up its inspection of existing systems. Require homeowners to submit receipts from the honey wagon to verify that they've been pumping out their septic tanks on a regular basis. If they don't, the district hires a pumper truck and sends the homeowner the bill (too nanny-state for you, PP?).
   

What is a sanitary district to do? I'll post our conversations online, for those of you who are really, really interested in sewage policy. Lake Herman residents and neighbors, if you have any suggestions or observations, feel free to offer them as comments at that website. Thanks!