As election day draws near in Chestertown, Ward 2 Councilwoman and candidate for mayor, Linda Kuiper, has drawn fire from Town Manager Bill Ingersoll on claims that the town “missed out” on collecting $3.6 million in water and sewer fees from the Coventry Farms development.
“When Coventry Farms was developed there were no…water and sewer hookup fees,” Kuiper said at a candidate forum at the Garfield Center on Monday. “I calculated all of the lots out there and the town missed out on over $3.6 million that could have been put into a capital improvement plan for our utilities commission to repair the terra-cotta pipes that our now cracking, and then we wouldn’t be digging down 14 feet on Water Street to repair and patch what’s happening down there.”
Kuiper’s statement was in response to a question from an audience member who asked the candidates how they would maintain the town’s infrastructure and critical services if elected.
Ingersoll flatly denied Kuiper’s claim.
“It is completely false that the Town ever waived even a single water and sewer hookup fee for Coventry Farms,” Ingersoll wrote in his email to Kuiper yesterday. “This would never happen. I do not know where you got this information, but it certainly was not from the Town Hall. I am not sure why anyone on the Council would say such a thing and compound it by calculating false losses over a long-term period. It is a very serious mistake in my estimation. The withdrawal of this statement should be made.”
“I knew the statement was false and I went through our general ledger from 2006 through 2008,” said Chestertown Financial Director Pat Diver in a brief call with the Spy on Thursday. “All the water and sewer fees were substantial during that time and no fees were ever waived. The auditors make sure that the building permits have matched up to water and sewer [hookup] fees. The auditors would have noted this in their reports if we had missed collecting any fees for Coventry Farms.”
Diver said the fees have gone up over time but no one has been exempted from paying them.
“We’ve collected the [proper] water and sewer fees for everyone,” she said.
The Spy made three attempts to contact Kuiper by phone prior to publication of this story, calls were not returned.
See Kuiper’s statement from the candidate forum on Monday.
[…] also took aim at mayoral candidate Linda Kuiper for her statements that the town waived over $3 million in water and sewer fees for the Coventry Farms […]