The Urbana City Council discussed a new solution for residents of the Ellis Subdivision, who are seeking city compensation for their aging sewer laterals, Monday night. Under the new proposal, the city would incur all sewer repair costs on city property.

Rex Bradfield, Republican mayoral candidate and retired engineer, proposed that the city take on all financial responsibility for sewer laterals once they reach city sidewalks and streets. He said only slight adjustments would need to be made to the current ordinances.

The original ordinance council members planned to discuss was to increase city funding to the Sewer Reimbursement Program from 50 percent to 75 percent of lateral repair costs, which would put less financial burden on a homeowner.

However, Bradfield gave several examples during his presentation where the city would actually pay less money and residents would pay more under his proposal.

“This will save the city money in all cases except long front connections,” he said.

The long front connections are the situations where the sewer main is on the opposite side of the road from the home, and the city street must be torn up to fix the sewer lateral.

“The city is responsible for connections,” Bradfield said. “Water to the valve, electric to the meter, phone to the box … anytime you are on the service side of it you accept the responsibility.”

Evelyn Underwood, resident of the subdivision and leader of the request, spoke on behalf of fifteen other residents, saying she wasn’t looking for a handout from the city or an increase in the reimbursement program.

“City take care of your responsibility, people take care of your responsibility,” she said. “We want to take care of it, gladly.”

Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing said the discussion was just one step toward finding a solution for the sewer issue.

“We are going to listen to other suggestions and either keep this or advise it depending on what the public input is,” Prussing said. “We did look to see what other cities were doing. Just because we have always done it that way doesn’t mean we need to keep it that way, but we do need to analyze the costs.”

The city council unanimously voted to send the ordinance and the proposal back to Urbana Public Works staff to review over the next four to six weeks. The staff will analyze the costs of Bradfield’s proposal in comparison to current reimbursement program.

Council members Charlie Smyth, Ward 1, and Diane Marlin, Ward 7, also brought an update to the council concerning social service funding.

Together, they constructed guiding principals by which the council will choose which social service agencies to fund in the future. They also revised the application questions agencies answer to apply for funding so council members can effectively identify each agency’s need.

Smyth said the document will be finalized at the next week’s meeting.

Corinne can be reached at [email protected].