SEVEN HILLS The price to comply with orders from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to remove septic tanks is too high for some council members.
The price would apply to households on Broadview Road to connect with sanitary sewer lines to comply with a 2003 EPA order.
Approximately 62 households would have to pay about $285 a foot, according to Ward 3 Councilman Aaron Lobas.
A price that high — charged as a kind of a tax on property owners’ tax duplicates — could amount to $50,000 for some house owners, Lobas said.
He doesn’t want it.
“We can’t have an option that you’re putting people out of their houses,” Lobas said.
The lower end of assessments would be $7,000, he said.
The project would entail Broadview from the cemetery north of Starlight Drive to Skyview Drive, and tie sewers at Firethorn Drive.
In a discussion Aug. 31 by the Sewer Committee of City Council. Chairman Frank Petro, councilman-at-large, and Lobas decided not to recommend that the full council pass ordinances that, among other things, would notify homeowners of assessments.
“As committee chairman, I’ll never vote on it,” Petro said.
He predicted opposition.
“This is going to be a big fight,” he said. “It’s going to cost us a lot of money.
“If that was my grandmother who got her assessment for $40,000 — come on!” Petro said. “I can’t do it conscientiously unless every rock was turned.”
Petro and Lobas agreed to pursue options but otherwise put legislative steps in the hands of the full council.
As an option, Petro and Lobas want the city engineer to see if the city could get a larger grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission. A bigger grant would reduce assessments.
OPWC awarded about $603,000 to the city, which represents 25 percent of the cost.
But reapplying for a larger grant might lessen the city’s statistical chances of approval. Also, a potential problem is the possibility that Seven Hills’ reputation with OPWC would be diminished. The city’s history with OPWC includes the city’s previously rejecting a grant for a project on Rockside Road, it was said.
Petro wants the mayor and Papke to get help from decision-makers at the EPA.
Petro wondered if officials don’t realize how “odd and peculiar” the project is.
He said the project is peculiar because some houses have sewers, meaning other homeowners would have to pay more to run lines past them.
To scope the possibility of defending itself in court against the EPA, Lobas and the city law director talked to an attorney who previously enforced EPA rules. In a phone conversation during the committee meeting, that attorney, Joseph Koncelik, admitted that the assessments facing households are “very high,” suggesting the possibility it is too excessive to stand up in court.
Lobas, an engineer, also suggested performing another engineering analysis to drop the cost. But Papke said the present engineering represents the least cost.
Contact Baka at
(216) 986-2355.