Paradise sewer board reviews new proposal

Programs at the door may be a wise expenditure as the battle for the Paradise sewer heats up amid leadership and money challenges for the beleaguered Sewer Board and its members.

After experiencing a resignation, followed by a rescinding of the resignation, followed by the re-resignation of board member Janis Barber until a key, if not symbolic, vote can be taken on a revision of the original plan, Barber is still technically on the Board pending acceptance of her resignation by board members.

“I will be sending an email this week stating I am resigning,” Barber told her fellow Sewer Board members and a small, but vocal group of Paradise property owners last week. “I will participate in the final vote on this (new) proposal”.

The resignation merry-go-round comes as members of the Paradise Water District planned to submit a bill for between $32,000 and $42,000 to the Sewer Board for compensation of monies paid out of the Water District budget over the past several months for expenses incurred such as election costs, insurance costs and other items.

Water District member Katy French, a local engineer who owns property in the unofficial town of Paradise and is opposed to the plan by Great Western Engineering to install a $4.5 million sewer system through the town, said she would be presenting the bill to the Sewer Board at tonight’s meeting.

“The Water District board is going to approve an invoice for the amount due, stating it must be paid immediately,” French said. “The payment should be made before the Sewer Board tries to spend any more money, and we will be seeking interest due. Today’s dollar is different than it was when this started.”

And, French said, the current attempt to accept a revised proposal for a land purchase by the town from besieged property owner Bridger Bischoff may have run into an insurmountable obstacle.

Grant monies and other funds that were set aside for the sewer system project, including money to purchase an approximately 6-acre plot owned by Bischoff, are facing a series of deadlines showing the project is alive and moving forward, including a preliminary counter-proposal from Bischoff.

That proposal would move the original site of a sewer drain field from one end of his property on the northern edge of the town to the eastern side.

“One of the problems with that,” French said, “is there are so many things that would have to be done to do this legally. We’ve been told the land for the proposed new drain field site is mostly clay, which is not compatible with a drainage field”.

In addition, the new site would have to undergo a one-year study by the Department of Environmental Quality” to determine the viability of the site.

“There is a lot of field research that would have to be done and none of it has been,” French said. “The Sewer Board is trying to go from a memo of understanding to a buy/sell agreement with Bridger without doing any due diligence. They are very far from being ready”.

At last Tuesday Sewer Board meeting, Board member and sewer proponent Don Stamm defended Bischoff’s new proposal and urged the Board to take action with financial qualification deadlines looming.

“I think he (Bischoff) is trying to negotiate in good faith,” Stamm said. “I move that we accept his proposal as a draft and negotiate any changes from there”.

Board members Dewey Arnold and Terry Caldwell questioned the costs associated with the new proposal and the number of hookups Bischoff would be granted to develop as many as 40 housing units on the main section of his property.

Opponents have long argued negotiations that were not held in public are a key reason the project should not be constructed, along with the extra costs to financially strapped Paradise property owners and residents.

Barber, who voted to accept the Bischoff proposal before she packed her things and left the meeting as it was nearing conclusion, urged Board members to “accept the proposal as a first step”.

In the end, all five Board members voted in favor of accepting the new buy/sell proposal with the provision that changes could be made during those negotiations.

That did not sit well with local activist and sewer opponent Lee Ann Overman, who has been a leader of the fight to halt the project from the beginning.

“Not a whole lot of change in this new proposal than there was before,” Overman commented. “Bischoff will get lots of free things on the back of property owners who cannot afford it. The town will not accept this, two-thirds of the residents already voted recently to not have the sewer.

That vote was an unofficial canvassing of the town by Caldwell who collected “yes or no ballots” from nearly all the property owners. Rejecting the sewer system won that unofficial tally by a 59-21 margin.

Since then, Caldwell and local resident Mark French have both offered to fund the $5,000 cost of an official election but the idea was laughed off by now retired Sanders County Commissioner Carol Brooker.

Overman and others have repeatedly called for an official election to decide once and for all if the majority of Paradise residents are for or against the sewer project.

“I think Bridger is asking for the moon,” Caldwell said in reference to the new proposal.

Board member Arnold also asked if the 40 units Bischoff wants to include as part of the system and state/federal funding could be excluded from the new plan, with Bischoff paying those hookups in the future.

That issue is intertwined with wording that allows Bischoff control of 75 percent of present and future “volume” of the new system if it is built.

And community opponents are riled by reports of a non-public meeting allegedly held by the Board at the Paradise American Legion bar. The group was said to have gathered at the Legion, which would be at odds with legal issues involving transparency in all matters involved with the project.

“I wanted the meeting so we could discuss the offer and come to the Board meeting with more knowledge of what was involved,” Barber said.

Board member Jane McFadden, who was appointed along with Stamm by Brooker in the wake of a successful recall vote against two prior board members, angrily denied such a meeting took place.

“We called the meeting off,” she said. “We did not have a Thursday meeting”.

Needless to say, tonight’s Sewer Board meeting will have a packed agenda.