It's expected to cost every homeowner a minimum of $500 per month.
As a result, many southeast Bend residents in Desert Woods or Kings Forest subdivisions will be forced out of their homes. They'll likely have to sell their homes at a reduced price. Call it a gift to the real estate cartel in Bend.
Of course, nowhere else in Bend has the city added $50,000 to the cost of an existing home.
The city says it is forced to do so for a variety of reasons. The state mandates that any home with a septic system within 300 feet of a sewer line must connect to the sewer if their septic system fails.
The city recently completed the Southeast Interceptor sewer line that runs through Kings Forest and Orion Greens. By doing so, any home within 300 feet of this sewer line much connect to it if their septic system fails. This could result in someone, living 290 feet away, having to pay the exorbitant cost - more than $100,000, of running a sewer line down the street to their home.
So, in order to avoid one house close to the sewer line paying a much smaller price than one house farther away, the city wants all households to agree to a more equitable solution. The city wants the 599 houses to share, 50-50, the public cost of the sewer installation. The private costs of each home to connect from the house to the sewer line is all on the homeowner.
Well, the city's extortion attempt is wrong.
Twenty years ago, Bend residents brought this problem on themselves when they forcibly annexed these southeast subdivisions. The residents in these subdivisions voted against annexation but were overwhelmed by the vast majority of Bend residents at the time.
The city knew then that it would eventually have to face this problem of adding these homes to the sewer system. Yet, the city set aside no money until last July to help pay for the forced sewer expansion in southeast Bend.
In addition, the city chose to run the Southeast Interceptor through these subdivisions. It did so largely to relieve a stressed system caused by NorthWest Crossing and other westside developments.
The city also wants to decommission many of the sewer-pumping stations that now exist and occasionally fail throughout the city.
Because of decades of poor planning, Bend has far more sewer-pumping stations than any city in Oregon.
The city also notes that there are no federal or state grants available for this southeast sewer project.
Those types of funds dried up in the early 1980s, they said.
Coincidentally, there was a huge federal tax cut for the rich in the early 1980s followed by two more this century. As a result, there will never be any federal money available for any public infrastructure projects again unless Congress passes legislation to do so.
If all else fails, the city should be like the federal government and just borrow the roughly $30 million cost of the project. The city can get better rates than individual citizens, particularly through the Dept. of Environmental Quality.
Bend appointed an advisory committee to come up with solutions of how to pay for the sewer project in southeast Bend.
Naturally, the city mayor and other councilors said from the beginning that the city would not pay more than 50 percent of the public cost.
Well, the advisory committee is likely to recommend to council that residents not be saddled with more than $25,000 each in total debt for public and private sewer costs. The committee will likely recommend that the monthly cost to a homeowner be about $250 per month.
In order to make up the difference, the advisory panel will likely recommend a $5 monthly fee to all sewer users in Bend, both business and residential. It seems like a modest amount considering that the residents in the affected subdivisions didn't vote to join the city and had no choice in where the Southeast Interceptor was installed.
But, advisory committees are just that. They have no clout and really no say in the outcome. They exist primarily as political cover for the council, which can turn around and say, "hey, we engaged the public and gave them their due."
Well, it's another reason why residents sour on local government. They don't listen to their citizens.
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