The owners of a Southeast Portland apartment building are suing the city of Portland for $91,000 on claims that municipal workers refused to respond to sewage spewing into the building's basement because budget cuts prevented them from working overtime.

The lawsuit, filed last week, claims that the owners of the 52-unit Melcliff Apartments in the Belmont neighborhood discovered they had a problem at about 9 p.m. on Dec. 6, 2015. A city sewer line had clogged, and the resulting pressure blasted off the cap of a pipe in the building's daylight basement and was causing raw sewage to shoot into the air.

After trying to solve the problem for two hours, the owners called the city's emergency sewer line at about 11 p.m., according to the suit.

"It was a Sunday night in early December, raining like crazy," co-owner Tim Gray of Melcliff Associates told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "The raw sewage is gurgling up like three feet in the air. I kid you not, the city says 'We can't come out tonight. We've had budget cutbacks. We're not allowed to work overtime.'"

Gray said he hired the plumbing company Roto-Rooter to try to solve the problem, but to no avail.

After working throughout the night to try to stop the flow of sewage, the owners made their second call to the city the morning of Dec. 7 -- prompting the city to send out a private contractor because a city representative said the city was too busy to respond itself, according to the suit.

Of note, December 2015 was the wettest month in Portland in recorded history, and Dec. 7 was a particularly stormy day.

Gray said the contractor turned out to be Roto-Rooter, and once again the company's 100 to 150 long snake device wasn't long enough to reach the clog.

The owners called the city a third time, and this time the city sent its own crew, which arrived at about 10 a.m. -- 11 hours after the owners' first plea for help, the suit states.

"Within twenty minutes the city crew stopped the sewage backup from spewing into plaintiff's property," the lawsuit says. "The city worker handed a business card to the plaintiff and stated that the city was totally at fault and that risk management for the city should be contacted."

The clog was traced back to city property more than a block away from the apartments, which are at Southeast 11th Avenue and Alder Street.

Gray says that after filing a claim for his costs and waiting five months for an answer, the city told him it wouldn't pay.

"Stuff like this, it's abysmal," Gray said. "I think they should change the slogan on the sides of the trucks -- 'The City that Works?' ...It doesn't work."

Gray said the city's response to the sewage back-up and his request to be reimbursed stings even more given years of rate hikes to sewer and stormwater bills.

The city attorney's office declined to comment on the suit. In response to a question from The Oregonian/OregonLive about whether city sewer workers have been told budgets cuts mean they can't work overtime, city spokeswoman Megan Callahan wrote in an email: "We are required to respond to sewage overflows or backups."

The lawsuit seeks about $41,000 for the costs of two weeks of cleanup; repairing or replacing floors, carpets, sheetrock and other damaged items; and offering rent reimbursements to several tenants who were displaced from their homes because of the smell, unsanitary conditions and flooding.

The suit also seeks $50,000 for the city's alleged "outrageous conduct" and lapses in protecting "its citizens from health and safety risks."

Beaverton attorney C. Thomas Davis is representing the owners.

Read the lawsuit here. It was filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court.

-- Aimee Green

503-294-5119