June, 23, 1998
Will sewer pact effort go down the drain?
By Jodi Billerman
Staff Writer
While previous negotiations for a sewer agreement between the city and the Seneca County Board of Commissioners may have fallen through, the commissioners haven't given up yet.
Monday, the commissioners met with Seneca County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Jeff Stockner to discuss his legal opinion of a new proposed sewer agreement drawn up by County Administrator Bob Anderson and Regional Planning Director Paul Harrison.
Anderson and Harrison used sewer agreements from other areas as a pattern for a preliminary agreement, which they composed themselves at the urging of the commissioners.
The board then submitted the proposed agreement to the prosecuting attorney's office, the designated legal advisor for the county.
Monday, Stockner delivered a 20-page legal assessment of the contract. And, judging from the conversation between Stockner and commissioners Kenny Estep and Jeff Wagner, the news isn't good.
Stockner said that while the proposed agreement is ''a good outline, a skeleton to build on,'' he would not advise the board to enter into such an agreement.
''My major concern at this point is that there's a lot of terminology in the agreement that is industry-related,'' Stockner said. The attorney said those terms needed to be well-defined. ''I think you and Bob (Anderson) and Paul (Harrison) know what these things mean, but grammatically, they need to be cleaned up.''
Also, Stockner said, the agreement favors the city. ''That agreement is completely detrimental to the county.''
Wagner pointed out that the agreement had been patterned after those of several other counties, saying, ''This seemed fairly neutral to me.''
But Stockner disagreed.
''Oh, no, not even close to being neutral. It is very one-sided,'' he said. ''Of course, I'm not looking for the county to have the upper hand, but in places, there's indemnity for the city but not for the county. I mean, come on.''
The bottom line, according to Stockner, is that formation of any agreement will be complex and drawn-out process requiring consultation with MS Consultants, the county's contracted sewer experts, along with the prosecutor's office and the commissioners themselves.
''We wanted something to send to the city in a timely manner. I mean, the city's already moving ahead with their own plans,'' Wagner said, referring to plans for sewers at SR 100 and SR 231. ''I don't think it'll be too long.''
''If you're loooking at that kind of timetable,'' Stockner said, ''you're going to have to sit down eight hours a day and hammer out the details.''
Following the meeting, the commissioners seemed somewhat disheartened by the news.
''I think everybody would agree that an agreement would be better than no agreement,'' Estep said. ''I guess Jeff (Stockner), as our legal advisor, is trying to protect the county and get a good agreement.''
Wagner asked Stockner if he felt it wise to commit so much time and resources to the agreement when it could very well be rejected by the city anyway over annexation issues.
''I think we should put a fair agreement in front of them, and if they reject it out of hand, that'll tell us volumes about their intentions,'' Stockner said.