Sewer Fees and Fire Department Are Focus of Council Meeting
Southington will have a new sewer fee system after the town council unanimously passed a new ordinance on Monday night to update the decades-old system of charges.
“We need to update to ensure we're balancing predictable economic development with strict municipal cost recovery,” said Tony Morrison, chairman of the Sewer Committee.
The new ordinance, which can be found here, outlines two specific major changes. First, a series of new fees related to applications, reviews and inspections will run from $50 to $750 depending on the job. The changes apply mainly to reviews of connections and related issues, and will be used for staff compensation.
Second, a new capacity fee is designed to ensure developers pay for new sewer implements, not residents.
“That's a fee that's going to be on developers for all new development. It's designed to ensure that they pay for this, and that our sewer customers don't, because that's the stuff that will drive any infrastructure we need with a sewer capability going forward. So for our customers we don’t want that to be imposed on them,” said Morrison.
In addition to sewers, the other major focus of of the night was the Southington Fire Department.
The Ordinance Committee had forwarded a proposal to Town Council that would involve charging the insurance companies of a driver deemed at fault for a crash if the fire department is involved in recovery efforts. The council voted 6-3 along party lines to move the endeavor to the next stage, which would include soliciting bids from vendors that specialize in cost recovery. The council will wait until those proposals come in before taking further action; however, Town Manager Alex Ricciardone recommended earmarking revenue from cost recovery for fire department equipment purchases.
Council member Christopher Palmieri, who was one of the dissenting votes, mentioned his concerns over the legality of selective targeting of out-of-town residents for cost recovery. But his main worry, he said, was about a potential rate increases for insured drivers: “My main concern is, as the resident pointed out [during public comment], the unintended consequence… a potential premium cost share increase for insurance holders.”
The fire department was on the agenda a second time when alternatives to the FEMA SAFER grant were discussed, which the council recently voted to turn down. Potential proposals would allow the fire department to receive between one to nine of the 12 firefighters the original grant would have funded. However, the council voted 8-1 to table the discussion on the grounds that it was not entirely clear to most members whether FEMA would allow the town to accept a slimmed-down version of the grant.
Morrison, who was one of five council members to vote against accepting the grant, was the lone dissenting vote for continuing to pursue alternatives. He said any discussion related to alternatives should wait until the council starts working on the budget for next year.
“What I can see [in the FEMA grant language] is a line staring me in the face: FEMA will not grant waivers for SAFER funded positions in the grant. So why are we spending our time talking about it, which we've done apparently for the last four weeks?” said Morrison. “Why don't we spend our efforts on things that we can do that aren’t going to lead us to a dead end? That's why I say we should vote tonight not to continue with these discussions.”
