Victor Wastewater Vote: Why Going Back Is Closed

VICTOR. The Victor wastewater fight reached its next milestone Wednesday when City Council voted 3-1 to amend the fiscal 2026 appropriations ordinance by $2,625,366 and to disburse $1,984,035.25 to close the Evans purchase, a 40-acre parcel at Highway 33 and 7000 South, the site of the city's planned independent Class A treatment facility. Councilors Sue Muncaster, Emily Sustick, and Stacy Hulsing voted in favor. Councilor Amy Ross dissented. Mayor Will Frohlich was absent.

Evans and the city signed the purchase contract in August 2025.

The 3-1 margin overstates the division. Muncaster, Sustick, and Hulsing each treated Wednesday's amendment as an execution step on a decision the council had already made through earlier votes: the Victor wastewater facility would be independent of Driggs, built on the Evans parcel. Ross alone treated Wednesday as an opportunity to reverse that decision. She did not offer a credible mechanism for doing so.

The majority: executing the path

The three yes votes converged on a single observation. The council committed to an independent Victor facility long before Wednesday, across a sequence of prior votes. Wednesday was the execution step.

Muncaster opened the deliberation. "I am fully in support of this amendment," she said. She read from paragraphs 133 and 134 of Victor's complaint against Driggs in CV41-26-0062, which says that Victor offered Driggs a joint partnership, fair customer, and shared-use arrangements for a single wastewater treatment plant, and that Driggs refused each.

Muncaster invoked the advisory chain around the council: staff, the city administrator, the mayor, the Association of Idaho Cities, the city's insurer ICRAMP, the auditor, Treasurer Jasmine, and City Attorney Herb Heimerl, and said her confidence in the amendment rested on trusting them. "I am not a lawyer," she said. "I trust our legal counsel."

She cited eight residents who contacted her the day before the meeting to express support. She did not name them.

Muncaster also framed the vote as narrow. "The budget amendment allows us to do what this body has already voted to do," she said, meaning the August 2025 Evans purchase contract, the subsequent annexation, and the decision to pursue an independent facility were settled questions. Wednesday's amendment was the execution step, not a new decision.

Later in the deliberation, she added a second argument about the costs of delay. "Every delay, every disruption, etc., is taking money away from making this the best plant that it could be," she said.

Sustick carried the structural argument. She asked each council member whether any of them could propose an alternative to the current path. The question was the framework: if no alternative was offered, continuing was the only course available.

Sustick then answered her own question. The alternatives, she said, had been "fully and thoroughly explored" and had not produced an equitable outcome. "Therefore, we have a responsibility to solve for wastewater." She said she remained "100% 1,000% committed to the health and safety and welfare of every neighbor that lives nearby," and noted that she was friends with some of them. She made the motion to waive the first reading of Ordinance 0651.

Hulsing agreed with Muncaster's opening and added an observation about unseen supporters. Residents, she said, tell her in private they don't want to engage with the dispute. "They don't want to get in the tumbleweed that's blowing around the valley," she said.

Hulsing also addressed the contested origin of the Evans purchase. Public commenters and the plaintiffs in CV41-26-0091 have characterized Besbris's July 3, 2025, letter to Paul Evans, which referenced eminent domain, as the opening move of the deal. Hulsing told the council it was not. "That letter was not the first approach," she said. "The perception that that's how the first contact was made is wrong."

Ross: going back

Ross was the only councilor attempting to reopen the underlying decision rather than execute it. Sustick asked the council for an alternative. Ross answered.

"The alternative is going back, dropping the lawsuit," Ross said. She described the path as requiring "a ton of diplomacy and a ton of humility." She said she suspected, based on the body language and murmuring she had seen at earlier meetings, that most residents did not care about past grievances between the two cities and wanted a regional wastewater arrangement.

Ross built her strongest factual point from recent news. Driggs received a Class A grant from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. The exchange among councilors suggested that Driggs ranked near the top among state applicants this cycle, after a lower ranking the previous year. Victor could not access the award after the city withdrew from the joint arrangement.

"We could have been a part of that," Ross said. "I feel kind of heartbroken for Victor that we gave up our opportunity to do that."

Ross did not argue the economic case in detail, but the two options cost about the same. Valley Signal's analysis of the figures both cities have published found that the independent Victor wastewater plant costs roughly $115,000 per year less than continuing with Driggs, a difference small enough that the choice between the two paths turns on factors other than cost. [See: The Wastewater Numbers Behind Victor's $35 Million Bet.]

Ross also raised procedural objections under Idaho Code 50-1003 and the amendment's funding mechanism. She treated those as secondary. Going back on the Victor wastewater path was the core of her case.

What "going back" would require

Ross described her alternative as going back, dropping the lawsuit, returning to negotiations, and finding a regional arrangement. Three facts on the record make that path unavailable.

First, Driggs set the precondition. Mediation between the two cities is paused because Driggs will not resume discussions unless Victor first waives all claims. Dropping the lawsuit is not a step toward Driggs. It is the price of entry, Driggs named, and Victor has not paid it. Ross's proposal starts with a unilateral concession.

Second, Driggs is the party whose refusal began the sequence. The paragraphs Muncaster read on Wednesday describe a series of offers from Victor for joint partnerships, fair customer arrangements, and shared-use arrangements, each of which Driggs declined. The lawsuit followed the breakdown in collaboration, not the other way around. Reopening the conversation means reopening it with the partner who closed it.

Third, Driggs is no longer waiting. The IDEQ Class A grant funds Driggs's own facility, now in design and proceeding without Victor as a customer. A Victor request to be added back in would arrive at a plant whose capacity, service territory, and cost structure have already been set on the assumption Victor would not be part of it. The seat that Ross would like Victor to reclaim is being removed from the building.

None of this makes Ross's read on resident sentiment wrong. People do generally prefer regional solutions to intercity lawsuits. It does mean that the path Ross described — drop the lawsuit, apply diplomacy, see what remains — starts with a concession Victor would make unilaterally to a partner who has already said no, about a plant already being built for someone else.

What to watch

The Evans property purchase is scheduled to close by April 30. The next Victor City Council meeting is on May 13 and may include the first budget work session for fiscal year 2027.

Sources: April 22 Victor City Council meeting recording and transcript; Budget Amendment Ordinance 0651; Victor complaint in CV41-26-0062, paragraphs 133-134; Amended Petition for Judicial Review in CV41-26-0091; Idaho Department of Environmental Quality grant records; Valley Signal, "The Wastewater Numbers Behind Victor's $35 Million Bet."