Lower MUA Wants Council to Mandate Water Hook-ups

VILLAS — Lower Township Municipal Authority (MUA) Board of Commissioner voted July 3 to recommend to township council a connection fee of $1,600 for homeowners who have water available in their street but have not connected.
The board is asking township council to pass an ordinance requiring mandatory water connections for those homeowners who have chosen not to connect.
Commissioners discussed lowering the connection fee to $800 for homeowners who have pipes in their street.
Villas resident Michael Beck, a former township councilman and independent candidate for mayor, asked if a $800 connection fee for those who have not connected was fair when others paid $1,600 to connect to the water system.
“You’re kind of rewarding behavior that you really didn’t want,” he said.
Beck said a street could look like a checkerboard with homeowners hooked up for different fees. He said council received a proposal for a $1,600 connection fee for everyone, with 10 years to pay it off, in 2006 but did not act on it.
On streets where water mains and connections at the curbside have been installed, the infra-structure has been paid for by grants or loans, “and it’s sitting there idle,” said MUA Executive Director C. Mike DeMarcantonio. He said he believed everyone should actually pay $2,800 “because that’s what it costs.”
Resident Ed Butler, vice president of the Taxpayers Association of Lower Township, said that was not an affordable connection fee.
Commissioner Thomas Brown said a mandatory connection ordinance would affect 487 homeowners that have water available but have not hooked up.
DeMarcantonio said the more people that connect to the water system, the lower the connection fee will go because more users share the total expense.
He said to get a $1,600 connection fee, a property owner would be required to apply within one year, connect immediately and begin paying their monthly water bill. A homeowner will have a maximum of three years at no interest to pay the $1,600 connection fee. After a one-year grace period expires, a homeowner would pay the full $2,800 fee if they do not connect.
After two years and no connection, the MUA would place a lien on a property for the connection fee.
DeMarcantonio said MUA and township council needed to come to an agreement. He asked the township waive plumbing permit fees for the connections.
“If we don’t have mandatory water connection, we can’t put any more pipe in the street,” he said. “We can’t do U.S.D.A projects either.”
Commissioners voted to raise water connection fees for new construction for single-family units to $2,890 and sewer connection charges to $2,806. That also applies to streets where pipes do not currently exist.
DeMarcantonio said those figures were based on a calculation scale from the state Department of Community Affairs DCA) which takes into account all the authority’s bonding, all interest paid and all capital expenditures divided by the number of users of the water system.
The water calculation for Lower Township totaled $18.4 million divided by 6,396 users, which equals a connection fee of $2,890, he said.
The sewer calculation was $33.5 million divided by 11,954 users, which equals a connection fee of $2,806.
“That’s the way it should be calculated according to law,” said DeMarcantonio.
He said the figures represented the amount of money the MUA has expended.
Last year, the board chose to lower those amounts to $1,041 for water and $1,698 for sewer, said DeMarcantonio.
Resident Steve Sheftz, a former MUA commissioner, said residents in areas such as Town Bank, which has volatile organic compounds in some private wells, would not support a con-nection fee of $2,800.
Board member Charles Garrison said the MUA has been subsidizing those who connect by of-fering rates that were probably 60 percent of what they should have been.
“It’s about time we start to get up where it has to be, bitter pill or not,” he said.
Commissioner Richard Wall said the DCA-based calculation of a $2,800 connection fee was the maximum amount the MUA could charge. He said the utility could charge “considerably less.”