A fair fee proposal

Baker City officials have bemoaned the city's crumbling sidewalks for years, but now they're talking about replacing the rhetoric with dollars.

This is a good thing.

We urge the City Council to finish what it started during its Feb. 26 meeting, and impose a sidewalk utility fee on water/sewer customers.

Councilors passed the first of three required readings of an ordinance setting a fee of $1 per month for residential customers, and $2 per month for commercial customers.

The fee would raise an estimated $61,000 per year.

The Council could approve the final reading as soon as its March 25 meeting.

We like the proposed sidewalk fee because it offers residents a much bigger carrot than it does a stick.

The ordinance requires the City Council to set aside at least 25 percent of each year's fees as grants that residents could apply to defray the cost to repair or replace a sidewalk.

The City Council would use the rest of the money for sidewalks in high-priority places — near schools, for instance.

City officials strived to make the ordinance fair.

The fees — $12 per year for residents, $24 per year for businesses — ought to be affordable for the vast majority of customers.

But the ordinance does allow customers to petition the city manager for relief.

The ordinance also cancels the sidewalk fees as of June 30, 2013. The city might continue to charge the fee after that date, but only if the City Council in place then votes to do so.

Overall the city's proposal is a modest one, which is appropriate for a city of modest means.

Some residents have argued that they shouldn't have to pay a fee because they recently replaced the sidewalk that adjoins their property, without financial aid from the city.

Some other residents live along gravel streets or paved streets that lack curbs and gutters, so they probably won't ever build sidewalks.

But sidewalks are an asset to the entire community, just as streets are.

Not all residents will directly benefit from the fee — by receiving a grant, for instance — but everyone who uses sidewalks will indirectly benefit.

Those benefits are worth the minuscule cost that the entire city will share.