Kent Commissioner Ron Fithian said he’s tired of hearing claims from Chestertown government about unpaid sewer hookup fees the county owes for properties at Lover’s Lane, which the county insists were covered under a 2007 extension of the 1982 Quaker Neck Service Area agreement.
“This has almost gotten to be a joke,” Fithian said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “We already went through this whole ordeal for the last two years [with Chestertown] saying that we are improperly paying them for the Quaker Neck hookups.”
“Bottom line, if there was a real issue here we would have been in court, and it wouldn’t have taken two years to get to the bottom of it.” Fithian said. “The only reason nobody is pursuing it is because there is nothing there, and someone just doesn’t want to say they were wrong.”
Fithian raised the issue Tuesday because the county was in receipt of additional past due bills from the town for five properties at Lover’s Lane, four of which are not yet connected to the treatment plant and one account is actually a customer of Chestertown’s.
Fithian took aim at the Chestertown Utility Commission.
“If I had a utility commission that continued to make these off-the-wall statements, finally someone should ask the question, what kind of office do they run,” Fithian said. “They’ve been telling the whole world that we are improperly paying them and not abiding by some agreement. Seems like we’d be in court, but nobody seems to want to do anything about it, and I am to this day convinced it’s because they don’t have a case to begin with.”
The two-year dispute centers around interpretations of what was actually agreed to in a meeting in April of 2007 between the Chester River Association, Town Manager Bill Ingersoll, Maryland Department of the Environment, and the Kent Health Department to extend the Quaker Neck Service Area agreement to 23 adjacent properties at Lover’s Lane. CRA initiated the meeting to get the properties tied into the treatment plant on John Hanson Road to replace failing septic systems and avoid the need to construct a “package” sewer plant.
The county also asked for six additional allocations in a letter to Mayor Margo Bailey in May of 2007. The letter highlighted the requests made by the CRA at the April meeting and Bailey responded favorably with a letter dated July 23–confirming that the Town Council had approved the six additional allocations. She further stated in her letter that the town was committed to help with failing septic systems “as expanded” in the Quaker Neck Service Area, which the county believes refers to the properties at Lover’s Lane.
The county says the town is relying on a 2010 ordinance that established new sewer hookup fees, but last year the county’s attorney, Tom Yeager, said that the town can not use the new ordinance to retroactively charge sewer fees for Lover’s Lane, which were already addressed in extension of the Quaker Neck Service Area agreement.
“The town cannot unilaterally act to retroactively charge the County for allocations that the County had already received,” Yeager said in a letter to the Spy dated May 24 of this year.
Below are letters that were exchanged between the town and the county in 2007, when the county believes the issue of hookup fees for Lover’s Lane were addressed.
Gren Whitman says
This will o’ the wisp “dispute” continues to waste a lot of time. Our public officials and employees have more important tasks.
Steve Atkinson says
Not only a waste of time, but it is, as Mr Fithian said, becoming a joke. The Town and the Commissioners should be working together to improve the conditions of the county and not bicker about a subject that should have been closed years ago.
Jack Offett says
The real tail wagger is the CRA who clearly had the lefties on the town council by theirs. The hostility to the “package system” is part of their no growth agenda (which is really their anti-jobs and anti-families for tomorrow agenda). These “package systems” produce fair cleaner effluent than the current lagoon system on a much smaller footprint. More “golden arm” thinking not based on reality.
Heather Forsyth, Executive Director, CRA says
Jack,
Putting aside for the moment that CRA today is not the same CRA as it was almost 6 years ago, I’d love to talk with you about your idea that CRA has an anti-job and anti-family agenda. It’s certainly not my agenda for CRA. Please call or come by the office to chat. I’m guessing we might find some common ground and I’m interested in what steps you think we can make to improve our commitment to clean water and healthy communities.