Town, not water/sewer users, to pay for stormwater system

The Springfield Select Board has tentatively approved a change that will shift $85,000 to the proposed $9 million town budget from the Water and Sewer Department.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110114/NEWS02/701149885

Published January 14, 2011 in the Rutland Herald

Town, not water/sewer users, to pay for stormwater system

By Susan Smallheer

Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Select Board has tentatively approved a change that will shift $85,000 to the proposed $9 million town budget from the Water and Sewer Department.

The cost shift means that all taxpayers in Springfield will help pay for the recent upgrades in the town’s stormwater system, which has undergone many expensive upgrades in the past couple of years. The water and sewer budget is funded through user fees by the people and businesses who use the water and sewer system.

In fact, the board increased the amount originally proposed by Town Manager Robert Forguites and Town Comptroller Jeffrey Mobus, to put more of the increase in the town budget.

“We’ve been talked about this for more than a year, and it’s long overdue,” said Select Board member Terri Benton. “We’re moving some of that debt service to where it should be.” Benton wouldn’t support the proposed transfer until another $1,000 was added, bringing the total to $85,000.

Forguites said the change was warranted because the stormwater system is part of the town infrastructure, and was also mandated by the federal government to get stormwater separated from the sewage system. Stormwater overflows during rainstorms resulted in the discharge of barely treated waste into the Black River.

Forguites and Mobus had suggested an additional $65,000 transfer, which would add a penny to the town tax rate. The budget had already called for a $19,000 contribution.

“Everybody pays for street lights downtown, CSO (combined storm overflow) benefits the entire town,” said Forguites, in proposing the change, which will increased the proposed town budget in a year when the board is looking to level-fund the budget.

“There is no true logic to it,” Forguites said, in response to Board Chairman Kristi Morris. “We need to start somewhere. It could be more than that.”

Mobus said the state of Vermont is paying about $75,000 a year toward the sewer bond, as part of the agreement when Springfield agreed to host the Southern State Correctional Facility, and extend town water and sewer to the facility, which is located on the edge of town near Interstate 91.

In all, the state has pledged to pay $1 million to the stormwater/sewer bonds, said Mobus. So far, the state has paid $534,000 of the $1 million pledge, at a rate of $97,000 a year, Mobus said, and that will end in a number of years.

Springfield is wrapping up two years of extensive and expensive upgrades to its water and sewer systems, and it is just starting to pay off the bond issues that were approved by voters two years ago.

Mobus said after the meeting that the state was expecting $2 million in debt forgiveness toward the stormwater debt, thanks to federal funding from the so-called stimulus funds, or American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Currently, Mobus said, the water department’s debt stands at $7.8 million, and $6 million in combined storm overflow projects.

Mobus said that the transfer would “assist in paying” the total debt, but was not the full annual debt amount.