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Select Board to review water/sewer billing policies after multiple abatement requests
Summary
Property owners pressed the Select Board to correct connection‑fee billing anomalies after the town consolidated water/sewer billing: one owner sought consolidation from multiple hookup minimums to a single hookup, and Billings Farm received a proposed reduction to about 200 gallons/day based on wastewater operator findings.
Several property owners asked the Select Board on June 16 to review water and sewer billing practices following the town's recent acquisition and consolidation of utility billing. Clay Reed (speaker 19) presented two combined bills for a property he has owned 11 years and questioned why the town continues to charge multiple connection fees despite a single physical water line.
The board heard similar concerns from a commercial property representative (Tom List, speaker 16) who said an older building was still being billed with multiple hookup minimums even though the owner pays one consolidated invoice and does not separately meter tenants. Board members and staff agreed to investigate for consistency across similarly situated properties and to return with a clarified policy before July billing cycles. "Let's work with Robert and get consistency across the board," a board member said.
In a separate abatement, wastewater staff inspected Billings Farm and estimated cleaning and restroom water usage at roughly 100–200 gallons per day; staff recommended treating the operation as consuming ~200 gpd for billing purposes rather than the much larger billed amount. The board accepted the wastewater department's findings and voted to reduce the billed consumption to a commercial‑appropriate proxy, which the staff estimated could reduce the abatement from roughly $18,000 billed to approximately $900–$1,000 based on the town's rate structure.
