By Matthew Nash
Olympic Peninsula News Group
EDITOR’S NOTE: This corrects the threshold for exemptions for seniors and disabled residents.
SEQUIM — The Sequim City Council has approved a $30 million budget for 2017.
The council approved it unanimously 7-0 Monday.
Residents’ water bills will increase by 2 percent in January, which city staff say equates to about a 60-cent increase for users who use up to 650 cubic feet of water per month,
The increase is based on a 2013 study suggesting a 4-percent increase of water and sewer rates over six years, said Sue Hagener, Sequim administrative services director.
However sewer rates will remain the same because city staff found other avenues to offset the 4-percent increase such as an increase in city construction, Hagener said.
Council members also approved a 1-percent tax levy increase over last year’s levy amount allowed by state law. In recent years, assessed values within the city limits had been going down, but for 2017 the city’s assessed value is at about $906 million, said Connie Anderson, Sequim deputy director of administrative services.
Because of that assessment, and a high amount of new construction this year, some property owners’ taxes might go down; a homeowner with a $200,000 house could see an increase of about $1.
Senior citizens 61 and older and disabled residents making $40,000 or less per year are eligible for exemptions, she said.
New rates for fees and services were approved as well including general facility charges, to pay for new construction to join onto the city’s utility system, going up by $250 for both water and sewer to $6,850 for water and $8,800 for sewer.
Through October, city staff have issued 109 residential building permits and 83 commercial permits for new construction within the Sequim city limits for a total of $15,167,244.
Council members also approved a revised fee schedule for facility rentals that goes from a per-hour basis to flat fees per day, such as $90 to rent the Guy Cole Convention Center hall.
About $6.2 million of the budget is set for capital projects including reconstruction of Fir Street between Sequim and Fifth avenues, tentatively beginning the end of 2017.
The city of Sequim recently received a $3.1 million grant from the state Transportation Improvement Board for the reconstruction.
To complete the project funding, council members unanimously approved taking on two loans from the Department of Ecology and the Department of Health to replace 2,650 feet of 8-inch asbestos concrete water line along the road.
The loans come to $957,000 from the Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund at 1.5 percent interest over 20 years, and $830,129 from the drinking water State Revolving Fund at 1 percent to 1.5 percent depending on completion time over 20 years.
Sequim city engineer Matt Klontz has said that “the longer we wait, it’ll cost more in the future. We want to make these improvements now.”
However, some council members expressed concern over taking on more loans.
“It concerns me we just took on other loans,” said Councilwoman Pam Leonard-Ray. “We are in a sense saving money but I don’t know if this is something we do all the time.”
“While these are low-interest, I am sympathetic to keep our debt down,” said Councilwoman Genaveve Starr.
Earlier this year, council members approved loans from the state departments of Ecology and Health with some of the principal forgiven to expand a booster station to transfer water from the Port Williams Wellfield to a reservoir to increase reliability of water service ($745,000 budgeted), replace water lines ($481,000) and sewer lines ($517,000) on Sunnyside Avenue, perform engineering for an aerobic digester for two 100,000-gallon cells to increase capacity ($157,000) at the Water Reclamation Facility and construct a new lift station for waste at Doe Run Road ($261,000).
The loans came in at 1 percent to 2 percent interest over 20 years with the aerobic digester and the Sunnyside sewer and the Doe Run lift loans offering forgivable interest. These loans are the first debt the city has taken on since financing the construction of the Sequim Civic Center and paying off Keeler Park.
For more about the budget, visit www.sequimwa.gov.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
