Plan approved to pave after sewer work

At its meeting Tuesday, Spokane Valley’s City Council apprehensively approved a plan to fully pave the roads torn out for county sewer projects this summer.

“This is not something that we are going to automatically do every year,” said Councilman Rich Munson.

Council members agreed last year to look at fully repaving streets torn up for sewer projects on a year-to-year basis after voters turned down a bond in 2004 that would have funded the paving.

“We went to the voters and asked them to say, ‘This is how we are going to make this happen, this is how we’re going to pave back these streets’ and they said ‘No’,” Councilman Mike DeVleming said.

The council passed the measure 6 to 1, with DeVleming’s the dissenting vote.

Sewer lines will be installed and the roads replaced in the Vera Terrace, Veradale Heights and Electric Railroad areas this summer as part of the ongoing septic tank elimination program.

Before Valley incorporation, Spokane County spent part of its road tax to repave the entire street after sewer projects, instead of just patching the areas where lines had been put in.

When it looked like it would be short on cash to fund the paving, Spokane Valley went to voters with a bond that would have raised property taxes 21 cents per $1,000 of assessed value for six years and bring the tax to the same level as the county’s.

The bond failed, but city revenues in recent years were better than expected and the council opted to spend money on the paving anyway after an outcry from residents in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood that would have had their streets patched.

“I think the city just did not want us to raise a tax to fix the roads, and we should do it within the confines of the money we have,” Mayor Diana Wilhite said at the meeting.