First Phase of Town Bank Water Project Completed

VILLAS — Phase one of construction to bring municipal water to Town Bank is completed.
At a Wed., April 4 Board of Commissioner meeting, Lower Township Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) Director Matt Ecker said some paving remained to be completed. He said he anticipated that phase of the project would be entirely closed out by May 1.
Phase two is under construction. Ecker said mailings have been completed to all property owners in the phase two area of the Town Bank project asking where homeowners want their service located.
MUA Commissioner Joseph Mento asked why the contractor was not paving the streets after water mains were installed. Ecker said crews needed to go back and re-tap the main to install services to homes.
“The services are going to be all the cross trenches going to everybody’s house, so its kind of inefficient to pave it and then come back, dig it up again and create all the cross trenches and then come back and pave those,” he said.
Ecker said the best method is to pave all at once when all the digging is done.
Mento asked if the roads would be unpaved during the busy summer season. Ecker said the contractor has not started installing services but once they are finished trenching a street, they will pave it.
He said the contractor was not going to delay paving to the end of the job. Ecker said he would shrink the window of time from when services were installed to homes and when streets were paved as the season approaches.
MUA continues to wait for a water allocation permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection so it can actually put water in the mains to Town Bank. Ecker said it was not a matter of MUA not getting an allocation permit, it was a matter of taking a long time.
IN OTHER BUSINESS: Ecker said the MUA issued 992 lien notices to property owners in 2011 for lack of payment. He said that was nearly 10 percent of the MUA’s customers.
“That number gets reduced to 786 in February and these properties have to be searched by the tax office for anybody who is a mortgage or lien holder on the property, they have to be noticed of our intent to lien,” said Ecker.
He said that consumed a lot of Lower Township office resources.
“The bottom line is when our customers don’t make those payments timely, it consumes resources at the MUA and ultimately that has to be paid for by customers that are making their payments,” said Ecker.
He asked commissioners to imagine what it takes to send employees out to terminate 700 plus properties. Ecker said MUA employees knock on the door of homes that are about to be terminated and inform the homeowner the water will not be turned off if they can go to the MUA office and even “make a partial payment.”
He said a total of 325 properties went to tax sale.
MUA Office Supervisor Emily Oberkofler said prior to a customer being subject to a tax lien, they receive seven delinquency notices. She said customers were also called if they provided a phone number to the office.
Another notice is sent by the township tax collector with an attempt to reach the customer by phone, said Oberkofler.
The tax sale is scheduled for April 23.
Ecker said did not know of any other utility that offered an interest-free, five-year payment plan for the connection fee. Property owners have one year to connect when water arrives on their street with a $325 annual payment available towards the total connection fee.