STONE HARBOR – Property owners will see a jump of $125 per quarter for water and sewer utility services beginning this spring.

Borough Council members Jennifer Gensemer and Kenneth Biddick announced the hike in the fees at the council’s April 1 meeting. The new fee will begin in the second quarter of the year; the first quarter has already been billed.

Gensemer said the utility budget has not been properly accounting for expenses that are part of the support for water and sewer operations. These include pension payments for utility employees, liability insurance and workers compensation. The charges had incorrectly been put in the general fund budget, where they counted as cap expenses.

Biddick explained that covering the new costs that will be transferred to the water and sewer utility budget will require the $125 fee addition for each of the three quarters remaining in 2025.

The council did not vote to add that new fee at the April 1 meeting; it will likely be part of the budget introduction process on April 15. The full council must vote for any fee change and must do so prior to billing going out for the second quarter.

Biddick said there would be a change in 2026 to the formula that sets water and sewer usage rates. He said that the new process for setting rates will most likely charge higher fees to those property owners who have higher levels of usage.

This will help the borough appropriately allocate proportional expense to properties for the rates the borough pays to the county Municipal Utilities Authority for sewage flow.

He urged homeowners to get exclusion meters if they do not already have them in order to ensure that irrigation water use is not counted as sewage flow.

Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.