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Town Center residents want water rates reduced
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Published: March 10, 2010
HARRISBURG - Residents of Harrisburg Town Center want their water rates reduced to be in line with the town's other residential water customers.
Ross Annable, treasurer for the Town Center's homeowners' association, asked the town council on Monday to adjust the current rates for all 373 units in the development. Those rates, he said, have been in place since the units were built in 2002.
While no formal documentation has surfaced, both Annable and town officials said the controversy dates back to an agreement between Town Center developer J&B Development and the Town.
In lieu of charging J&B Development tap fees when the units were being constructed, the Town agreed to charge homeowners based on its commercial rate for monthly water usage.
On Monday, Annable told the council the breakeven period — the time in which customers would have to be charged the higher fee to offset the nearly $750,000 in waived tap fees — was 7.5 years.
Annable argued, given the construction date of 2002, the water rates should have decreased at some point in 2009.
"In April 2009, water bills were hiked by roughly 44 percent," he told the council. "That increase in April 2009 followed a 10 percent increase in September 2008. We, of course, had a terrible outcry by our residents."
Annable requested the fees be adjusted from the commercial rate to the lower residential rate, which most Harrisburg families are charged, effective at the start of the town's next budget year, which begins July 1.
"We are a residential development," he said. "The elevated water bills are placing a substantial burden on our residents. We cannot go on this way."
Councilman Bob Scaggs said that while there's no way to change the dealings made when the development was built — or, at this point even know what those dealings entailed — he believes the residents shouldn't be asked to pay a higher rate.
"Whatever transpired before many of us were on the board, there were agreements made. There were handshakes in the hallways," he said. "There's nothing we can do about that. It's in the past. I do believe in fairness, and we are charging a commercial rate to residences.
"The reason we have the commercial rate is for very high consumers in small footprints. That's not what we have here. My charge to the staff is to figure out, 'this is what's fair? This is what's right?' Figure out how to make the numbers work."
But Town Administrator Michelle Reapsmith said the matter is more complicated than just changing the rate the Town Center homeowners pay.
"The rate that town center is paying, they're not the only one's paying that," she told the board. "There are other residences that are charged a commercial rate. If we (change the rate), we have to do it for all of them."
A reduced rate would mean reduced revenues, which could lead the council to need to increase the residential rate across the board to make up the deficit, Reapsmith said.
Council members agreed that they needed more information before moving forward.
But for Annable, it's just common sense.
"A residence is a residence is a residence," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's a family unit on a slab over here or a condo unit on the third floor over there. A family lives in it and it's a residential unit," adding that all residential customers should be charged the same rate.
• Contact Jonathan E. Coleman: 704-789-9105.
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