City of Lisbon to raise sales tax to pay for roads damaged during spring flooding

Lisbon, ND (WDAY TV) - The city of Lisbon is raising its sales tax to pay for flood-damaged roads. They say FEMA's road repair estimates came up 230-thousand dollars short from what the city says needs to be fixed. Now, the city's taxpayers will make up the difference.

Before this year's flood, this entire stretch of road looked like this, but after countless Army Corps. trucks and thousands of pounds of clay came through this area, it now looks like this and that's exactly what the city is disputing. If you would've told Randy Seelig he'd be fighting the flood six months after the spring attack, he wouldn't have believed you.

"It took our whole summer away from us."

"You put the gravel in there and the traffic pushes it out two hours, and you go out and put it back in. You either leave it or keep filling them with gravel."

The city is trying to get money from FEMA to repair residential streets around Lisbon that are still ravaged from trucks driving them daily during the flood.

"Place like Broadway, there isn't hardly any of the street left."

But the city's public works director says FEMA isn't covering 230-thousand dollars worth of damages: because it's not including 12-hundred square yards of damaged roads. In part, because he says FEMA didn't measure the destroyed streets right.

"I'm not aware of them measuring anything."

"We're long in some areas and we're short in others and we can't just transfer where we're long, over to where we're short."

Seelig says FEMA reps. came out three different times, but they didn't go out with the city to look at the streets, together. FEMA reps. told the city that their measurements are right and that they won't pay for any repair more than the parts they measured.

"I'm just disputing there's more! They just didn't measure enough!"

Because of this, the city is raising the city's sales tax a half a percent, to 7 percent: generating about 90-thousand dollars a year.

“We got to put our town back to the way it was and that's, what we thought, the fairest way to do that."

But it won't go to the taxpayers for a vote. Since it's a city ordinance change, it goes before the city council three times, then to the state for approval. But this isn't the last chance for the city. Right now the city is in the process of filing an appeal with FEMA, which is the last option they have, but if that doesn't work, they'll have to pay for the extra themselves.

The earliest the sales tax could be into effect is April 20-10.