Date: Fri 30-Aug-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

sewers-assessments

Full Text:

with chart: Officials Try To Nail Down Town Costs For Sewers

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

With the date of the expected completion of Newtown's sewer system just one

year away, town officials want to know exactly what it is going to cost the

local taxpayer.

At their meeting last week, members of the Legislative Council said the Water

Pollution Control Authority needs to decide by the end of the year how much

the town will be assessed for municipal buildings which will be hooked to the

new sewer system. The council says it needs the figures to determine how much

tax revenue will have to be raised to pay the bill.

Earlier this year the WPCA set the residential assessment at $9,900, to be

paid back by property owners in the sewer district over 20 years at an

interest rate of two percent. These homeowners also will pay a one-time hookup

fee and an annual sewer usage charge. But the WPCA has yet to set the

assessment formulas for municipal and commercial/industrial sewer users.

When sewer construction began nearly two years ago, the council thought it

would only have to pay to hook town buildings to the sewer system plus the

annual user fee. So the council put aside $500,000 in the reserve account for

capital and non-recurring expenditures to pay for the hookups. Last winter the

council learned that town buildings also will be assessed.

Like homeowners, the town has access to loans which can be paid off over 20

years at an interest rate of 2 percent. But the money to make these payments

must be included in the 1997-98 budget because the bills will begin once the

sewer system goes on line in September 97.

Finance Director Benjamin Spragg said it has not yet been determined how the

repayment will be structured for the $18.5 million loan which the town will

receive from the state through the Clean Water Act. "One of two methods will

be used - level principal or level debt," he said. "In a level debt, the same

payments are made for 20 years. In a level principal, more is paid at first

and payments decrease over the 20 years."

"Whichever method is used by the town probably will be the same method used

for homeowners - it would be prudent to match the two methods," he said.

With a level debt repayment method, homeowners in the sewer district would pay

$601.08 a year for 20 years.

Council Member Joseph Borst said he has asked the Connecticut Conference of

Municipalities for information about how other towns handled municipal sewer

assessments and whether they even assessed the town-owned buildings.

Council Vice Chairman Melissa Pilchard said she is concerned not only about

municipal assessments but about the financial impact of the assessments on

businesses in Newtown.

"The first figures I heard a year ago (for commercial/industrial users) were

frightening," she said.

Peter Gross, project manager for Fuss & O'Neill, Inc, of Manchester, the

company which the town hired to supervise construction of the project, said

the anticipated completion is September 1997 "or a month or two before that."

"We are well ahead of schedule," he said.

Approximately 70 percent of the piping has been laid, the sewer plant is 30

percent complete and more than half of the money allocated for the project has

been spent, he said.

Eight of the nine contracts have been bid. Contract 3A, for directional

drilling along Main Street to avoid tree roots, was scheduled to be awarded

this week. The ninth contract, for pumping stations, will be bid within the

next few weeks.

The original engineer's opinion of the total sewer construction cost was $25.6

million. The bids came in at $22.7 million but some changes which were

required have pushed the total up to about $23.5 million. Last week voters at

a town meeting also approved using up to $600,000 to bring a sewer line to the

high school, if necessary, and $660,000 for a septic repair program for

property owners outside the sewer district. Altogether, the sewer project

costs now total about $31.75 million.

Voters several years ago approved a maximum of $34.3 million in bonding for

the sewer project. They also agreed to pay one-third of the capital cost of

the project through the general tax rate with the other two-thirds to be paid

by property owners within the sewer district.

Nearly 20 miles of pipe are being laid in the borough, Taunton and Sandy Hook

Center .

John Whitten, supervisor of the project, told the council that Currituck Road

has to be repaired because a water main broke over a weekend and it took 12

hours for the leak to be found and repaired. A new gas main also will be laid

on Queen Street before the final paving is done, he said.

Drainage work is being done on The Boulevard. Lateral lines will be installed

from the sewer mains to the houses, then a binder will be spread on the road

before winter.

Mr Whitten also explained why concrete sidewalks were being installed in front

of some of the offices along Church Hill Road and asphalt sidewalks in front

of others.

"We are required to put back exactly what was there," he said. "We asked the

DEP (State Department of Environment Protection) if we could use all concrete,

but the DEP said no because concrete is $27 a foot. Asphalt is $1 a foot."