Kuna City Council members set LID connection fee

Kuna City Council members have given local improvement district landowners a break on sewer connection fees — and provided an incentive to pay their assessments in full by March 22.
City Council members, on a 3-1 vote, approved a resolution Monday night that designates the $3,233.75 assessment as a credit toward the payment of a sewer connection fee. In addition to the assessment, if landowners pay in full within the 30-day open pay period, they can receive a sewer connection for an additional $500, which represents a discount on the current sewer connection fee.
Currently, a sewer connection in the city of Kuna costs $4,326. A big question that has been lingering for months is whether the LID landowners would have to pay that full amount in addition to the $3,233.75 that they’re paying as part of their assessment that’s paying back about $26 million in construction costs on the new sewer treatment plant.
The question was key, as it was a vital unknown for many landowners who were trying to make a business decision about whether to walk away from their land or not.
The resolution appears to be a good-faith effort on behalf of the City Council to address some of the complaints and concerns of the LID owners, many of whom likely face foreclosure on their property because of this assessment.
Although the resolution resolves some important financial issues, it likely won’t be enough to avoid a lawsuit, which many landowners have threatened.

You can read the rest of this editorial, including what happened with the EDU transfer registry, in this week's Editor's Notebook in the Kuna Melba News.

Kuna's LID owners must have thought dreams had come true

When Kuna local improvement district landowners opened up the Idaho Statesman yesterday, they must have thought their wishes had finally come true. The headline read, "Kuna may finally dissolve LID." Whoever wrote the headline mistakenly thought that Kuna was going to "dissolve" the LID, rather than "close" the LID. "Closing" the LID means that the city would be bringing to a close the interim financing that built the new wastewater treatment plant and assess the landowners for what they owe. "Dissolving" the LID would mean scrapping the LID, something I'm sure the LID owners would love to see. Funny, though, I didn't see a correction in the Statesman today, and in fact the dissolve headline is still on their web site. Maybe they know something the rest of us don't. Maybe dreams do come true...

Kuna schedules an open meeting on LID

Kuna City Council members will hold a special meeting at 6 p.m. next Tuesday, Jan. 26, at City Hall to meet with landowners participating in the local improvement district.
The purpose of the meeting is “to go over numbers,” according to council member Jeff Lang. The council scheduled the meeting after an hour-and-a-half executive session Tuesday night to discuss “potential litigation.”
Ostensibly, next Tuesday’s meeting is supposed to make up for the deliberations and decision-making that went on during two previous executive sessions last month, after which council members announced that they were going to reduce the LID’s assessment by a couple million bucks and have city ratepayers pick up the difference.
Although council said the meeting is for LID members, the repercussions are huge for every city taxpayer. The general public is invited and encouraged to attend. Let’s hope the council doesn’t go into executive session.

Kuna City Council has a new council president. Find out who it is in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Kuna local improvement district issue coming to a head

Kuna City Council members are scheduled to meet with property owners who are part of the local improvement district that’s funding the new wastewater treatment plant.
Council members will meet in a special meeting with LID members starting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 29, at City Hall.
The council scheduled the meeting after getting out of executive session last week. The executive session was held to discuss litigation or potential litigation on two cases, according to city attorney Randy Grove. One case apparently concerns potential litigation over the local improvement district.
Grove said “there is a noticeable rise in the anger and tension” among LID owners as he saw at a meeting a couple of weeks back. That’s certainly understandable.
The ironic thing in all of this is that LID members jumped into the LID four years ago under the assumption that they wouldn’t be able to develop their property at all if they weren’t a part of the LID. But now, landowners who are not in the LID may actually have an easier time developing their property and purchasing sewer connections on an as-needed basis. It seems to me that the LID owners have plenty to be disgruntled about, and the city would do well, however late, to listen to their concerns.