County Taxpayers Will Help Cover Sewer-Cost Discrepancy For Project At Miller Park

About 400 Valley homeowners’ sewer bills will be higher than expected, but not as high as they might have been.

Spokane County commissioners last year decided to charge $3,100 for a typical residential lot in the Miller Park sewer project, which will be built this year.

The project includes land from the north side of Sprague Avenue to the south side of Fourth Avenue, between Park and Eastern roads.

On Tuesday, engineers told commissioners they had miscalculated the cost of the project, which actually will be about $3,900 per lot.

“We screwed up,” said utilities director Bruce Rawls.

Commissioners could have charged the homeowners the additional $800 and risked tying up the project with appeals from people angry about their bills. Or, they could let county taxpayers make up the $357,000 shortfall.

Instead, they split the difference, raising the assessment to $3,500. The change means homeowners will pay an additional $20 a year, if they spread the bill over 20 years, as most sewer customers do.

Typically, the county charges each homeowner $4,000 when it builds sewers in a neighborhood. In most neighborhoods, that doesn’t nearly cover the cost of construction, and the county pays the difference from property taxes, state grants and other funds.

Construction is less costly for the Miller Park project because the lots are smaller than most in the Valley. For that reason, and because many of the houses are owned by people with limited incomes, the commissioners decided last year on the exceptionally low assessment.

, DataTimes