Municipalities often allocate the cost of new infrastructure such as sewer lines to property owners who benefit from the improvements. Such improvements often take place when a city expands its services to newly annexed areas. The choice of an allocation basis is often contentious as the cost is significant (often in the thousands of dollars per house) and the benefit is hard to quantify.

Required:
a. Evaluate the following three possibilities as to their suitability for allocating the cost of improving the sewer lines to property owners.
1. Equally across all homeowners.
2. Based on linear feet of road front for the property.
3. Based on property value.
b. Discuss how, if at all, your relative ranking of the allocation bases would change if the improvement were to install sidewalks instead of laying a sewer line.