Politics & Government
Point Boro to Reinstate Water-Sewer Surcharge
An anticipated $500,000 deficit in the 2012 water and sewer budget forces council's hand, council members say
Anticipating a deficit of $500,000 in the borough's water and sewer department, the Point Pleasant Borough Council agreed to reinstate a surcharge on all water and sewer users in the borough.
While no formal action was taken Tuesday night during a special budget workshop meeting, the council members agreed in principle to have Borough Administrator David Maffei add the surcharge into the budget figures he was to send to the borough auditor Wednesday morning so a proposed budget can be readied for introduction on Monday.
Council will meet at 7 p.m. Monday at
Find out what's happening in Point Pleasantwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Closing the deficit in the water and sewer budget was the major sticking point in the discussions Tuesday night. Part of the deficit results from an increase in the amounts charged to the borough by the Ocean County Utilities Authority and Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority, Maffei said. The OCUA charges increased $130,000, while the BTMUA increased more than 4 percent, roughly $94,000, he said.
In addition to those increases, there remains $300,000 in bills from 2010 that went unpaid. Council members asked what those bills were and why they went unpaid, but Maffei was unable to provide specifics at the meeting, saying those details were in the worksheets of the audit conducted by David Fallon and he would gather them this week for the council.
Find out what's happening in Point Pleasantwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"We've tried our very, very best to bury 2010," Mayor William Schroeder said, "but it's still with us."
The surcharge the council reluctantly agreed to is the same amount charged last year, Maffei said, and will be for the third and fourth quarters, just as it was last year. So a homeowner hooked up to both the town's water and sewer will pay a surcharge of about $34 -- $17 for water, $17 for sewer, Maffei said.
Residents can also expect an increase in their water rates, most likely for January 2013, to cover the increased costs of providing those services. Current water rates are roughly the same as they were in 1996, Maffei said. A rate assessment will have to be conducted before a rate increase is put into effect, Schroeder said. How much and what form the increase will take have yet to be determined.
