“Something was missing.”
That was the verdict of Chesapeake Beach Mayor Bruce Wahl after an almost three-hour Town Council meeting resulted in a tabling of a Utility Fund budget ordinance that would have totally restructured the water and sewer billing system.
As a result of public and council comment, there was confusion as to whether 80 or 100 percent of “capital connection” fees — a one-time charge to for hooking up to public water and sewer — were being used to subsidize rates, and, if 80 percent, where the remaining 20 percent was shown in the proposed budget.
Since 1982, the town has billed according to a “tiered” system where unit cost for water was reduced as a customer used a higher volume. “One of the main shortcomings is that there is no direct relationship between usage and bills,” said Wahl. “It makes it difficult to have that accountability.”
At the May 9 special work session he had also stated, “A system that decreases the rate the more you use makes no sense in an era that promotes conservation.”
The proposed budget would eliminate the tiers system and divide the rate into fixed and variable components. The fixed rate would cover such costs as employees, chemicals, debt service and other charges that are basically the same no matter what volume is pumped, while the variable rate is for the water itself.
Every user of the system would pay the same fixed charge “per meter” regardless of usage. The other part of the bill would
