Hookup Fees For Eagle Ridge Neighbors May Drop City Considering Lower Charges For Connecting To Sewer, Water Lines

City Council

The Spokane City Council wants to make it less expensive for landowners near the Eagle Ridge housing development to hook up to new city sewer and water lines.

Two ordinances are scheduled for votes next Monday to establish special connection charges for water and sewer lines along Eagle Ridge Boulevard, Moran View Avenue and Meadow Lane Road.

Last May, the council declined to adopt a proposal for more costly latecomer fees for property owners living near the Eagle Ridge development.

The new proposal likely means the end of a lawsuit against the city and short-term savings for private landowners who want to hook into the lines built for Eagle Ridge.

The developers of Eagle Ridge installed water and sewer lines from U.S. Highway 195 to their 2,500 platted home sites on a hillside overlooking Latah Valley.

Genstar Development Co. paid for installation of the utility lines so it could build homes in Eagle Ridge.

The lines pass next to other properties where owners now could hook up. Under state law, the city collects fees from those other property owners based on their fair share of the cost of the utility installations.

The initial proposal would have required landowners to pay a per-acre charge for their entire parcels even if they needed only single hookups for their homes.

The council rejected that plan because some rural property owners were facing thousands of dollars in charges for connections.

For example, someone with a house on 20 acres was facing hookup fees of nearly $50,000 for water and sewer.

Now, the city legal department has come up with special connection charges that would have property owners paying smaller fees for single homesites regardless of acreage.

The proposed fee would be $1,800 per hookup for a water connection and $1,000 per hookup for sewer.

The homesite fee is the same as the charge for one acre of land. Platted properties would pay large fees based on their acreage.

If a property owner later decides to plat and subdivide a larger parcel, additional connection fees would be paid.

The attempt to allocate the costs of sewer and water construction led to a lawsuit earlier this year.

Owners of the Latah Creek Short Course golf facility sued the city in September over a $27,000 charge for water and sewer connections based on the initial proposal for latecomer fees based on total acreage.

Assistant City Attorney Bob Beaumier said the less expensive special connection fees should resolve the problem for the golf course and lead to a settlement of the lawsuit.

“We regard it as more convenient,” he said. “We are trying to reorganize and streamline things.”

In a separate action, the city is expected to pay Genstar for the cost of water and sewer lines along property that does not serve the Eagle Ridge development. The amount is estimated at $139,000 for the water system and $88,000 for the sewer line.

The city would recoup that money through the special connection charges in coming years.

Genstar spent $1.23 million for its water main, water tank, a pump house and booster station. It paid another $349,000 for the sewer line.