In STEP With The Supremes!

No, STEP-ing with SCOTUS—not dancing with the musical group The Supremes, although that would be fun! Hey! Everyone has to deal with a sewer in their lives it appears, not just the residents of the Prohibition Zone in Los Osos!

Here is just the first page to the document found at the link below:

I was noodling around the Internet on my phone, bored, waiting for some appointment or other, and I found a case in 2012 that was a sewer question actually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court! Naturally, it was a sewer funding fight based on equal protections to taxpayers! On June 4, 2012, the Supremes ruled in favor of the city of Indianapolis and against 31 Northern Estates residents.

Indianapolis was requiring that the people in this neighborhood abandon their septic tanks and hook up to a sewer that had a line now going by their properties. There were two sorts of payment plans when the project began; you could pay the entire $9,278 up front or you could pay incremental amounts over 30, 20 years, or 10 years.

In any case, the city changed its method of funding (from the Barrett Law*) to one called STEP, the Septic Tank Elimination Program, which financed projects like this partially by selling bonds, which lowered the cost to the individual to hook up to the sewer. This also came with much less administrative work, where monthly payments as low as $25 would drag on for as long as 30 years. Those who paid the sewer assessment in full would not be getting a refund, as opposed to those who paid as little as $309.57, whose debt for the rest was forgiven. Unfair!

The city's argument of administrative convenience and cost, trumped the homeowner's claim of unfairness. The Supreme Court explained that there needed to only be a plausible policy reason to agree with the city.

Read further:

http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/20125832.htm

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-161.pdf

It would seem that the Supreme Court does not have the tools to get down into the weeds of local government. The city spent about $200,000 to defend itself (cheap by Los Osos lawsuit standards!) and I could not find how much the neighborhood spent in taking this to the Supremes. It was probably just a whole lot cheaper just to eat the $9, 278, instead of paying that amount, PLUS the legal costs. But logic does not apply to emotion-filled grievances here in Los Osos or, apparently, in Indianapolis either! And gambling seems to be an inborn response in hopes of better outcomes.

* Indiana's Barrett Law - the total cost of a project is divided up equally among those receiving the benefits.