This article was published on: 03/6/12 12:00 AM
What may come as a surprise to residents who have supported the
City of Bend’s original Surface Water Improvement Project slated to cost
about $68 million, city councilors are now considering cutting the
project cost in half by delaying the water filtration system
construction and not building the hydropower facility slated to generate
renewable energy.
However, opponents of the original plan say the city isn’t changing the project at all, but just spreading it out longer.
Bend’s
Surface Water Improvement Project, in the planning stages for more than
two years, is supposed to update and improve the surface water
component of the City’s dual-source system. But the basic premise of and
the cost of the project and related increase to ratepayers has brought
forth numerous objections from community leaders including Bill Smith of
William Smith Properties, Inc. and the Old Mill District and former
Mayor Allan Bruckner. They contend that city councilors are not changing
the $68 million plan at all, but in fact just delaying the project.
“It
doesn’t do anyone any good to delay a bad decision,” said Smith. “They
should stop the project and if the city wanted to show good face they
would stop engineering on the membrane treatment plant as well.” The
city is spending nearly $18,000 a day on engineering for the treatment
plan and will eventually spend millions just on consultants. “The city
needs to relook at the whole project,” added Smith.
Bruckner also
expressed his concerns: “I am extremely disappointed with the city’s
proposed resolution. The Stop the Drain committee feels very misled.
Rather than economizing and reviewing, it actually commits the city to
the entire project. They force any future council to spend the next $30
million, because without that, the $30 million they propose to spend now
is totally wasted.
“Additionally they offer no reduction in the
outrageous consultant design fees, even though designs may change if
parts of the project are delayed. And while it offers some temporary
rate relief, the whole project must be paid for, so it merely increases
the size of the bond necessary to pay for it. Their spin is very
misleading to the pubic.”
The project as planned still rests on
the State of Oregon extending the federal deadline of October 2014 to
treat its water for cryptosporidium. If extending the inevitable to 2020
as hoped, it will make the project cost even more due to inflation.
The
City now says it is planning to mothball the hydroelectric project, but
William F. Buchanan, Bend attorney, doubts that. “The city claims to
have received $18 million in “grants and loans” for the project,” said
Buchanan. “But these are merely loans with a mere $750,000 that is
forgivable. Aside from the misleading tenor of a city press release the
city’s own term sheet shows that $18 million is from loans, not grants;
the $18 million is secured by pledges from the City’s General Fund
revenues, thereby jeopardizing police fire and other essential services
without sufficient funding mechanisms given the plummet of real property
values and the $18 million in loans requires a hydroelectric project.
“Now
that the City claims it is mothballing that hydro project, wouldn’t
those low interest loans be lost? If so, why isn’t the City mentioning
that?”
The Bend City Council plans to continue discussions on its
new plan at the Wednesday meeting March 7 and consider a resolution to
approve it.