City looks to increase street cutting fees

The City of Sundance is rethinking its policy for property owners who need to install or repair a water or sewer line that runs under a city street. The hope is to ensure that contractors return the roadway to its original condition, rather than leave the city with that work and expense.

The issue was brought forth by the Land Use Planning Committee, which recommended that the current $250-500 fee is not sufficient.

The original suggestion was to raise it to somewhere between $3000 and $5000 as a deposit, in case the repairs are not completed. The idea would be for the deposit to fund the repairs if necessary, or to be refunded if not used.

While most contractors will ensure the road is back to its proper condition, said Mayor Paul Brooks, “Truthfully, we have a bad actor out there”.

This contractor is not paying fees, he said, and the city needs to find a way to sanction them.

“We could take them to small claims court if we need to, to try and collect the amount, or we could refuse to give them any kind of building permit,” said City Attorney Mark Hughes.

However, said Brooks, the contractor, “has a bad habit of digging first and asking later,” so refusing to issue a permit is unlikely to make a difference.

Council Member Brad Marchant commented that he deals with this kind of situation in his job with WYDOT. If a contractor does not abide by the permits, he said, “We blacklist them – they’re done. They would have to go through a lot of hoops to get back in.”

Complicating the situation, said the mayor, is the existence of weekends.

“The problem we run into is that so-and-so’s sewer has plugged up and it’s pretty miserable being them and they hire whoever they can as soon as they can to come out, and if that contractor arrives and cuts the street and digs in a whole new sewer line, but that contractor comes on a Saturday or a Sunday, we don’t have any way of collecting that,” said Brooks.

Discussing how much the city should raise the fee, Public Works Director Mac Erickson agreed that the current amount is not much of a deterrent for bad behavior.

However, he felt that $2000 would be too steep a cost, saying, “It would just be nice if we had a little more leverage.”

Hughes agreed that the increase suggested by Land Use could have consequences for city residents.

“The problem with that is that there may be people who can’t afford $2500 and if they have to pay it up front, they sit there with their sewer not working,” said Hughes.

Council Member Joe Wilson commented that he, too, does not want the amount to unfairly burden homeowners who have not done anything wrong.

“It feels like so much of the time that we spend here is we create laws and everything else to punish, to single out, the one bad actor in this. If we bump this thing up to where it’s going to cost to get a permit, it’s going to punish everybody,” said Wilson.

He suggested giving the resident and their contractor a month to fix the road. If this is not done and the city has to step in and fix the hole, the city would charge the full cost to repair it.

Erickson and Council Member Callie Hilty both strongly agreed. Hilty noted that it also addresses the fact that the length of a cut will be different every time and so will the repair costs.

“I think we’ve got to address the [bad actor] too, because he’s not in good standing,” said Marchant.

The problem, said Brooks, is that “he doesn’t care”. However, the council agreed to not renew his contractor’s license until he is in good standing.

A motion was made to leave the fee as it is for street cutting, but to add a clause giving a deadline of a month from the cut for repairs to be completed.