The Daily World Online: News Article
Despite protests, Shores council OKs sewer project - August 11, 1998
By JEFF BURLINGAME - DAILY WORLD WRITER, Aberdeen Daily World ,
OCEAN SHORES - Despite receiving 365 written protests from property owners, the city of Ocean Shores will go ahead with a $38 million sewer-improvement project, Finance Director Gordon Hey announced Monday night.
The project is the largest in the city's 28-year history.
The 365 protests represented roughly the same number of people who crammed into the Convention Center in June for a pubic hearing on the issue. Fifty property owners spoke at that meeting, most in opposition of the plan.
In July, the City Council approved the plan anyway, calling the project essential to stop contamination of canals and lakes caused by current septic systems that have reached the saturation point.
The Department of Ecology has warned the city not to continue with its current septic system. Grays Harbor County has also informed the city they would stop issuing permits for septic tanks by 2000.
About two-thirds of Ocean Shores - 8,000 to 9,000 lots chiefly on the south end of the peninsula - will be affected by the plan that would include the installation of a vacuum sewer system, necessary sewer mains, pump stations and vacuum pit service lines and valves.
Sewer service will be provided up to each property line, with the owner responsible for completing the line to the house.
To pay for the project, the city will form a local improvement district (LID), charging property owners who would be affected by the sewer project. Those owners would pay an average of $4,000, financed over a 10- to 20-year period, according to Hey.
Final approval on the LID was subject to a 30-day written protest period which ended July 30. The finance director said letters came pouring into his office, but there weren't enough to stop the LID from being formed.
Owners representing 60 percent of the assessed valuation of city property needed to protest, Hey said, before the project would be scuttled. The value of land owned by protesters totaled just 5.5 percent of the city's net valuation - far short of the necessary amount.
"Basically, what this means it that the LID is formed," Hey said. "I expected it would be, but I also expected more protests because of the great organization of the protesters."
A majority of protesters were concerned that property evaluations would increase, meaning higher taxes, Hey said.
A $7 million LID was completed in 1995 to sewer the rest of the city. The reduction of debt for that LID has been going well, the finance director added.
A $40 million line of credit was extended for the new project by Seafirst Bank in June.
The city is working on meeting the loan's requirements and will open bids for the work next week, said Hey this morning.
The city will sell LID bonds to repay the loan after the project is completed.
Construction on the Ocean Shores sewer project will begin next summer.