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The Lansing Town Board voted unanimously Wednesday to spend an additional $5,000 to complete a Map Plan and Report that will lay out details of an all-town sewer district.  The district will include the entire Town of Lansing excluding the Village of Lansing.  It will fold the Town's two existing sewer districts into the all-town district.

Town Engineer David Herrick presented a draft of the report to the Town Board and walked them through highlights of the plan.  The $10.8 million project will divide the district into two tiers.  To begin with, tier 1 will include three service areas, including the existing Warren Road and Cherry Road districts, plus a new service area that Herrick provisionally called the 'town center' area, starting at the Lansing schools, sweeping to the south to pick up Myers Park and the Ladoga Park neighborhood, then going east to include the new town center, businesses at the corner of Triphammer and Auburn Roads and the juvenile detention centers.

Tier 1, with over 1000 EDUs (Equivalent Dwelling Units, which are used to determine how much each property pays) will bear 60% of the debt, to be paid back over a 30 year period.  While the numbers are still not set, Herrick estimated that an average Tier 1 home hooked up to sewer would pay about $486 per year including debt service, operations and maintenance (O&M).  That is down from the more than $800 property owners were expected to pay in an earlier, more limited scope version of the plan.  O&M costs may vary because the two existing service areas are serviced by the Cayuga Heights treatment plant, while the town center area would be serviced by a new plant at Portland Point. 

Tier 2 properties would pay 40&% of the debt service only.  Last week Herrick estimated that 1736 properties, more than half of those in Tier 2, would pay $50 per year or less.


The more EDUs in the district, the less each property pays.  Herrick noted that the sewer committee chose a very conservative estimate of new EDUs to be constructed over the next five years.  Nearly 200 EDUs are anticipated in two projects slated for the new town center, assuming sewer is passed.  But a number of other developments to the south and west of the town center are also in the works, and with developers willing to provide the infrastructure for access to sewer, that number could double.

Herrick said the final Map Plan and Review can be ready for the next Town board meeting on January 20th.  If so, the Board could vote to create a provisional public service order that would begin the process of forming the district.  Sewer Committee members estimate that the sewer could come to a vote by September.

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