Cardington council freezes sewer rates after community protests proposed increase

By Eve­lyn Long -

More than 100 per­sons packed the room when Card­ing­ton Vil­lage Coun­cil met on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 22. The focus of almost every­one present was the vote on the sched­uled raise in water rates and sewer rates that would become effec­tive with the Feb­ru­ary 1 billing.

Mayor Susie Pey­ton, serv­ing as both mayor and some­times mod­er­a­tor, gave each speaker a five minute limit to vocal­ize their opinion.

Almost 90 min­utes later, after lis­ten­ing to the com­ments and offer­ing their own com­ments, coun­cil voted to freeze the sewer base rate for one year and to decrease the water base rate by three per cent for one year. The vote on the first mea­sure was unan­i­mous. The vote on the sec­ond mea­sure was five yeas and one nay, that being cast by Coun­cil­man Tim Abraham.

Coun­cil also voted unan­i­mously to cre­ate a 50 per­cent water base rate for the inac­tive accounts and a con­nec­tion fee for vacant lots with respect to vil­lage water service.

All of these mea­sures are effec­tive Jan­u­ary 1 and will be reflected in the Feb­ru­ary, 2013 billing.

Among the local res­i­dents offer­ing their com­ments was Chris Moller, a plumber, who works with water all over the area and said “we pay way, way too much — for the qual­ity of water we get.”

Eve­lyn Trainer, West Main Street, said “it is sad when I hear of peo­ple who can’t afford to pay their bill and can’t take show­ers because they don’t have water in the house. It’s ridicu­lous that peo­ple have to move out because of the water bill.”

She inquired about the fine levied with Card­ing­ton Yutaka and asked where that money was going. Danny Wood, vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor explained that money which has not been received yet, is man­dated by the fed­eral court to be applied to the waste­water plant upgrade. “We have to show receipts to show where it is spent,” he said.

Stephanie Hamm, a teacher in another school dis­trict, said she applauds the opin­ion of Cardington-Lincoln Supt. Brian Petrie (whose let­ter was read ear­lier by Pam Frysinger) and com­pared people’s choice down the road of sup­port­ing the school or pay­ing a water bill — “water or chil­dren — that’s pretty sad that we have to choose.”

Rick Sed­lacek, Gilead Street, a teacher at Olen­tangy for 21 years, ques­tioned the qual­ity of water and said it is not accept­able to at least 75 of us here. “If I’m going to pay for a Cadil­lac, I want a Cadil­lac,” he said. “As Brian Petrie said, the price is out­ra­geous accord­ing to the state. I feel I’m pay­ing for a Cadil­lac and I’m not get­ting any­thing near that. Why is the qual­ity so bad and the price is so high and why does it have to go higher?”

Bo Chris­t­ian, East Main Street, noted “We have a com­mu­nity prob­lem — it’s not some­thing the group or one per­son has caused — its your of reg­u­la­tions, etc. Yes­ter­day doesn’t fix the prob­lem– it takes a community.”

In response to a ques­tion about the source of Card­ing­ton water, Danny Wood, vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor, said the water comes from wells from Mar­ion County and picks up min­er­als along the way — “we pre treat the water with chlo­rine — then it goes through aer­a­tion when it comes to the plant we aer­ate most of the sul­fates out — it has high cal­cium — we soften it with ionic soft­en­ers — takes a lot of salt so we add a small amount of phos­phate — crusti­ness around the fix­tures — phos­phate is to bring that down — it costs us more money at the waste­water plant to remove the phos­phate — because we have a one mil­lime­ter allowance that we have to stay under on what water we put back in the river. We chlo­ri­nate the water on the way out — we mon­i­tor it every day– the only way we could improve it is some­thing you don’t want to hear and that is to upgrade the water plant. We main­tain the EPA stan­dards of 150 hard­ness.” He responded that he is pleased with the qual­ity of water when asked his opinion.

“We’re far ahead of other com­mu­ni­ties as far as replac­ing infrastructure.”

Mayor Pey­ton explained in 2010, “we had RCAP (Rural Com­mu­nity Assis­tance Plan) do a study — pre­vi­ously the gen­eral fund had been sub­si­diz­ing water and sewer — the EPA says util­i­ties must be self sup­port­ing — the com­pany said the rates must be raised by three per cent every year that includes cost of liv­ing and cost of run­ning the water and sewer plants.” Randy Fox, coun­cil­man said “The end of the study said base rates should cover oper­at­ing and main­te­nance costs of the water sys­tem — they sug­gested the rate increases — when we enacted the ordi­nance it said three per­cent from now on but we need to look at it to see if it should be adjusted. The idea is that is should be self supporting.”

In response to a ques­tion about the 48 per­cent base rate, Wood said that was to get the base rate up — cov­er­ing what we were behind – pay­ing for pipe line that is in the ground.

David Brown inquired about the water line that runs across his prop­erty on State Route 529. Wood said that is a trans­mis­sion line and we are still pay­ing on loans for that line.

Bill Chris­t­ian, Riverview Drive, for­mer mayor and a for­mer coun­cil­man, said, “We have approx­i­mately 700 cus­tomers here — this sys­tem has to be sold — I don’t know whether you have talked to Delco or Aqua Amer­i­can — it doesn’t mat­ter what you do today, we’re going to have to get rid of this sys­tem. We’re going to have to sell it for what they pay us. This sys­tem has to sell — you can­not main­tain this sys­tem with 700 cus­tomers. As util­ity bills go up, chem­i­cal bills go up; you’re going to be right back in this spot — three per cent? That means a $500 water bill. It’s the debt retire­ment that is killing us. You have prob­a­bly gen­er­ated $438,000 the last four years– you need to have a study on what this sys­tem is worth — not what you owe. We’re in a hole — we would have to eat the rest after get­ting our sell­ing price. What I’ve seen you could drop three per cent right now — you have 70 per­cent new water lines in this town. You need blue prints– Delco wants blue prints– It’s your job to have to do it. You’re going to have to do a study and then go to Delco and see what they will give you. From what I’ve seen, there’s no way you can keep this sys­tem — you can’t increase your cus­tomer base. Delco is right at your back door.”

Nick Cochran asked, “Can this debt be paid off early?”

Jim Dietz, vil­lage solic­i­tor, said the inter­est rates are fixed and there is no pre­pay­ment. “We have var­i­ous loans on both systems.”

Among oth­ers speak­ing were Crys­tal Spires, Julie Cole, Wade DeLawder, Bob Mer­man, Ardena Chris­t­ian, Tammy Brown, Mel Robinson,Ron Choina, Gene Evans, Janet Sed­lacek, and Heather Deskins.

Ques­tions were asked about the sale of the water sys­tem — and Coun­cil­man Richard Gar­ner said Delco wants noth­ing to do with our system.

“We have pipes from 1936 yet on Cen­ter Street, he said not­ing that the com­pany does not want to take on that kind of respon­si­bil­ity,” Gar­ner said.

Mayor Pey­ton thanked coun­cil mem­bers for their work on this issue. She extended spe­cial kudos to Wood for “look­ing for ways to save money.”

“This coun­cil has done the very best job with the job they were given,” she said. “We have even talked about our street guys putting in the lines to save money.”

Coun­cil­man Richard Cald­well noted that coun­cil had met over a period of 18 months to work on the water/sewer issue and took the mat­ter very seri­ously. “We con­tinue to mon­i­tor the fig­ures — the num­bers indi­cate we are gen­er­at­ing more income than we anticipated.”

“We put the water and sewer on a very, very strict bud­get and that car­ry­over includes what they saved– it was phe­nom­e­nal — if we can put them on a stricter level, it will have a play in it,” said Coun­cil­woman Vickie Wise.

John Gersper, Fis­cal Offi­cer, dis­trib­uted copies of the water and waste­water fund bal­ances. The fund bal­ance for the water depart­ment as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2013 is 968,786.18 with a car­ry­over of $263,656.98. The fund bal­ance for the waste­water depart­ment as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2013 of $179.697.80 with a carry over of $53,978.94.

Gersper noted that with­out the increase last year there would not have been enough to cover the sewer costs.

Reporter Mike Bow­er­sock and a cam­era crew cov­ered the issue for NBC4 of Columbus.

New Police Chief sworn in

In other mat­ters, Mayor Pey­ton gave the oath of office to John Hin­ton as the village’s new police chief. He has been a deputy with the Mor­row County Sheriff’s office and is a var­sity wrestling coach at Card­ing­ton High School.

Giv­ing the fire depart­ment report for the last time was retir­ing Fire Chief Jim Ullom.

He noted that Rich­land Town­ship had turned down the department’s offer of fire cov­er­age this year. All of those present gave Ullom a stand­ing ova­tion in appre­ci­a­tion of his years of ded­i­ca­tion to the depart­ment. They also wel­comed the new chief Gary Good­man with a round of applause.

Giv­ing the police depart­ment report was Lt. James Wal­lace who said the depart­ment had taken 58 calls in Jan­u­ary, up from last year by 15 calls. The 2010 cruiser is in a garage for repair work that includes a bad ball joint, defec­tive tie rods and rear brakes. He also said that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from DRMO had called in ref­er­ence to the Hum­mer. Because the vil­lage does not want it, DRMO will pub­lish a photo on their web site list­ing it for sale. They will also pub­lish other inven­tory asso­ci­ated with it list­ing it for sale.

Other busi­ness

Bills approved for pay­ment totaled $81,221.56.

Coun­cil also approved an ordi­nance amend­ing and fix­ing com­pen­sa­tion for cer­tain vil­lage employ­ees effec­tive imme­di­ately and also an ordi­nance autho­riz­ing the Admin­is­tra­tor and Fis­cal Offi­cer to enter into an agree­ment with UAN for new finan­cial soft­ware. Vot­ing no on this mea­sure was Coun­cil­man Tim Abraham.

Vil­lage Admin­is­tra­tor Wood said that the street crew had torn down the old grid build­ing at the waste­water plant.

Scott Hines, vil­lage engi­neer, said that the ODNR Grant for Maxwell Park had been approved in the amount of $60,000. Also received was $3,000 from Con­sol­i­dated Elec­tric and a $15,000 dona­tion. Jean Smith, local res­i­dent, who is active with the Maxwell Park, invited peo­ple to join her in the devel­op­ment. Bob Mer­man described the park as being an ideal place for school kids to learn about nature.

Coun­cil adjourned its reg­u­lar meet­ing at 9:25 pm and entered exec­u­tive ses­sion at 9:45 pm based on ORC 121.22(G) (1) and ORC 121.22(G)(3). Exec­u­tive ses­sion con­cluded at 10:55 pm with no fur­ther action taken.

Coun­cil will meet next on Feb­ru­ary 4 at 7 pm.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.