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Lawsuit seeks reimbursement of costs associated with Liberty sewer project
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Three property owners who were part of a sanitary-sewer project along Belmont Avenue in Liberty Township are asking a Trumbull County judge to order county officials to reimburse them the $32,565 they paid for the sewer lines.
The property owners were part of what the county called the Squaw Creek Interceptor sewer project Phase 1, which traveled from Tibbetts-Wick Road north to Crews Hood Road. It was a project the county promised the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency it would build to alleviate environmental dangers posed by poorly functioning septic systems.
The project cost $1.3 million and serves 28 property owners.
Jim Brutz, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor who advises the Sanitary Engineer’s Office on water and sewer matters, said he had not seen the lawsuit and had no comment on it.
Michael and Angela Dickey of Tibbetts-Wick Road in Girard, Harry and Martha Howard of Tibbetts-Wick Road in Girard and Paul Rossi of Hunter Street in Niles filed suit Friday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, saying they are in nearly the same situation as Gregory and Connie Schultz, who also owned property involved in the sewer project.
The Schultzes were victorious in a lawsuit decided by Judge W. Wyatt McKay of common pleas court in November 2013 in which Judge McKay indicated that the county commissioners and county Sanitary Engineering Department incorrectly carried out the sewer project.
Judge McKay said the county used a method of charging property owners that was intended for private contractors, not the county government, and that the method was unfair to the property owners because it required them to pay 20 years of interest up front.
After Judge McKay’s ruling, Atty. Thomas Schubert, who filed the suit on behalf of the Schultzes, said the ruling meant the Schultzes would not have to pay the $48,766 the county billed them for sewers on three parcels of land they owned.
Schubert also said at the time the ruling meant the sewer customers in the project who paid their bill should be reimbursed what they paid. The current lawsuit, also filed by Schubert, asks for that reimbursement.
The suit seeks a declaratory judgment indicating that the Dickeys, Howards and Rossi were unlawfully required to pay a share of the financing costs of the project “beyond their payment of property taxes.”