City wants school sewer fees

When the school district hooked up a sewer line at the new middle school last summer, it allegedly didn't pay the required $115,000 of connection fees. It still hasn't, and the City of Sisters is not happy about it.

"They hooked up without paying anything," said councilor Lon Kellstrom in a city council workshop on Thursday, February 26. "How did that happen? No one got away with that. The issue of them going ahead without approval -- that mystifies me how we didn't catch that. It is 115,000 bucks. I'm looking at us eating $115,000. That infuriates me."

The school district connected the new middle school to the sewer when McKinney Butte Road was built and the district ran a service line down the road to the middle school, said Eileen Stein, city manager.

Bob Martin, facilities and construction project manager for the school district, said he received an invoice for the sewer connection on September 18, and then met with the Stein and Superintendent Lynn Baker on October 30.

"I brought up the bill and asked questions for them to investigate," Martin said. "It was not until this last Thursday morning that they got back to me."

Martin met with Stein and other city staff on Thursday. Martin said he and the city are still in the process of evaluating the bill.

The city requires a $1,000 per "Equivalent Dwelling Unit" (EDU) connection fee. The middle school property has 29 EDU. So, the city is charging $29,000 for the city's water consumption, and $86,000 for Systems Development Charges (SDCs), Stein said.

SDCs and sewer rates are based on EDU.

Stein said the school district initially waited to pay because they wanted to see if they could transfer their EDU from the old middle school.

"At the time, they were hoping to make the case that they did not need a (systems development charge) requirement, because they have the old middle school and they were just changing location," Stein said.

According to Stein, precedent supports the position that the district must pay because it is creating a "new use."

Stein said the school district paid for the new high school, but not the middle school. She said the city knew when the school district made the connection, and made the mistake of not requiring payment at that time.

"They were hoping to work something out to transfer the EDUs for credit," Stein told the city council. "We knew something was happening. They went ahead and did it and it fell through the cracks. It should have been worked out back then. We had the hammer back in the summer and should have closed the doors then."

Stein said the city invoiced the school district for the charges in September.

Stein said that if a private person had failed to pay the charges, the city would have turned off the water.

The councilors and staff agreed the next step would be to ask the district to pay.

The councilors expressed concern about requiring the funds after the school board recently overspent its $21.5 million school construction budget by about $200,000.

"Now we are going to say pay up, and it is going to look like our fault when they let three teachers go," Kellstrom said.