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The Lansing Sewer Committee met Wednesday to consider  details of sewer distric boundaries and a three-tiered payment plan that may also fold the town's two existing sewer districts into a new town-wide district.  The committee had prepared a plan for a much smaller district, but costs to individual properties were deemed to be too high.  A town-wide sewer district could bring costs down to about 1/3 for those within the highest tier.

The new plan includes South Lansing and to the south from Buck Road to Cherry Road, spanning most of the width of the town.  One of the problems facing the committee now is the exact boundaries of the district, and how to handle the amount paid by non-profit and agricultural properties.  The committee is trying to understand complicated state laws while coming up with a fair policy.

Another issue is whether or not to include existing benefit districts.  The Town of Lansing currently has two sewer districts.  The most recent is along Warren Road, and the oldest is along Cherry Road.  The Warren Road district was paid for largely with state grant money, but beginning in 2014 it will have to repay $357,000.  The Cherry Road district currently has no debt, but it may be beneficial to district residents to pay into the larger district because it will spread the cost of replacing their aging sewer.

Only properties within a sewer district pay for the sewer, but not all of those properties necessarily get a sewer.  The initial service area is identical to that of the original plan, spanning the area between the Lansing schools to the west and the state juvenile detention centers to the east, and including Myers Park, the Ladoga Park neighborhood, and the new Town Center.  Additional service areas will be determined by the cost of infrastructure and who pays for it. 

Engineer David Herrick presented two possible plans breaking down who pays how much.  The committee was disposed toward a plan that would put more burden on those properties that actually hook up to the sewer.  That plan would still represent a considerable reduction in cost for those properties.

A three-tiered payment plan would see properties in the service area that are hooked up to the sewer paying the most, a middle tier of properties within the service area that are not hooked up, and a third made of properties within the district, but not within the service area that would pay the least.

The project cost has risen by approximately $300,000 to a total of $10,537,800.  The added cost is due to excavation needed on hilly land the sewer treatment plant will be built on.  Herrick says that because of the grade of the property it will have to be leveled.

If the original plan had gone forward the official process of forming a sewer district would have begun around a month ago.  Supervisor Kathy Miller says that it will take some time to get real numbers needed before a public service order can be approved.  She estimated that would take until the end of January.

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