City to contest bill from WSDOT

State department requests city pay for plowing of Broadway Avenue snow

The snow has disappeared from Broadway Avenue, but the contest of wills between the city of Moses Lake and the state's department of transportation continues.

The WSDOT has billed the city for plowing snow from Broadway Avenue, also known as State Route 171. City manager Joe Gavinski said the city will not pay the bill.

Gavinski explained that the situation amounted to what he described as a "unilateral decision" by the department of transportation, to bill the city.

The decision not to pay the state's bill, which is about $10,000, Gavinski said, has the support of city council members, who voted unanimously to table payment indefinitely last Tuesday.

"There was never any agreement to pay that," Gavinski said. "There was no law, no rule, no contract, nothing." Jeff Adamson, communications manager for the WSDOT, did not return the Herald's phone calls.

The reason for the billing, Moses Lake city attorney Jim Whitaker said, stems from a difference of opinion on the reading of a statute dealing with the cleaning of state highways during the winter months.

To the city, the statute reads,"the state takes care of snow plowing when necessary, and the city takes care of snow removing." Whitaker said the state reads 'removal' as meaning 'plowing.'

Further basis of the state's argument, Whitaker said, could be the WSDOT's belief that if it performed a service to the city, which the city would have to perform if WSDOT did not do it, the department would have to be reimbursed for that service.

The city manager said that since payments will not be forthcoming, there exists the possibility that the state is billing the city out of principle rather than out of a desire to collect a debt. On the other hand, there exists the possibility that if in fact the state wants that money, they may pursue further action before a court, a move Gavinski deems unlikely.

The impasse will become a much bigger deal if the courts get involved, with the state having to come in and establish their legal right to collect the money. Gavinski predicted the state will not want to go there.

"I don't think the state wants to open the issue up," he said, noting that other cities have the same sort of issues with the state, and therefore, they do not want to upset the agreements they may have with a court upholding a different reading of the statute.

Whitaker agreed, saying he did not believe the state will want to go to court and that the state does not like to sue political subdivisions unless they feel it is really necessary.

"These are all public entities and it's public money," he said. "They are supposed to try and get along to avoid wasting money."

Another reason why Whitaker does not think the state will take matters into judicial hands is the fact that the state has a limited number of attorneys, each with their already busy dockets. "It's an allocation of resources issue," he said.

The staring contest between the city and the state has grabbed the attention of towns such as Wenatchee, Whitaker said. Whitaker added that the state does not want to plow SR-171 and highways in Wenatchee which go through the towns but are no longer the primary state highways.

"In Moses Lake, the primary state highway goes around the town," he said. "So the WSDOT takes the position that those towns where the primary highway does not go through town, the town should clean the other state highways like it does its own streets."

Plowing Broadway is by no means a new topic on the docket of the city of Moses Lake, either.

Talks have extended for the good part of two years. Whitaker said the difference of opinion has lasted just as long.

"When the (WSDOT) folks came to city council, we told them that we still had questions," he recalled. "They plowed and then sent a bill. City council had never agreed they would pay.

"It's like the movie Cool Hand Luke," Whitaker said. "What we have here is a failure to communicate."