NEW SCOTLAND — With increases adopted just last May in some of New Scotland’s water districts, the town board decided recently to hold off on another round of rate hikes. 

In May 2021, the New Scotland Town Board voted to increase how much customers in the Font Grove and Clarksville districts paid for water. On May 11, those customers along with ones from the Northeast Water District received what appears to be some short-term relief as board members declined to increase their rates. 

The rate in the three districts was due to increase $1 per 1,000 gallons of water, while the minimum each customer paid every six months was set increase as well: in Clarksville, from $112.50 to $127.50; in Font Grove, from $135 to $140; and in Northeast, from $150 to $180.

 “With the situation where the districts were with previous increases and fund balance percentages and things like that … All things considered, we felt it was necessary to increase Clarksville one dollar across the board this year — which we did do last year — we did the same with Font Grove Water District and also for Northeast Water District,” Supervisor LaGrange said during the May 11 meeting. 

LaGrange said one of the reasons for raising the rate in Northeast was to bring its costs in line with the Kensington Woods Water District, which it will either become a part of or an addition to the district. “This would make their rates equal and we can better split the water costs,” he said. 

The Northeast Water District has repair issues to deal with before it can interconnect with Kensington Woods, LaGrange said. “We need to continue to build up their fund balance,” he said.

 Councilman Adam Greenberg asked LaGrange when Northeast would be interconnecting with Kensington Woods. LaGrange responded he’d like to have it done within six months, but then town engineer Garrett Frueh told them both that it’s been taking up to 10 months to procure pipe for jobs. 

Discussing the rate increases, LaGrange said the town had to take into account that costs had “gone up everywhere,” and that regular operation and maintenance costs were eating into the districts’ fund balances in addition to employee benefits — “everything’s getting higher,” he said.

Councilman Dan Leinung said he was “a little reticent” to raise rates in Clarksville, having just done it a year ago. He noted that it looked like the fund balances of the three districts were “actually going in the right direction.”

Because the board was responsible in the past, and raised rates when fund balances were low, the districts “have pretty healthy fund balances,” Leinung said, adding that Northeast’s rainy-day fund is 31 percent of its total budget. 

At the time the town adopted this year’s budget, in November 2021, Northeast had a $93,000 budget and available fund balance of $36,000.

Leinung said he’d like to wait in part because “we’ve only gotten six months worth of billing” at the new higher rates adopted last May. 

He said the pandemic had skewed usage; with more people home in 2020, usage had increased, dropped some in 2021, and then again this year. “So I personally want to wait a little bit, you know, another six months,” Leinung said, and see what the receipts look like.

LaGrange told Leinung he was correct about the pandemic’s impact on usage. 

“We did see a bump during the pandemic, obviously, with usage and a lot more revenue coming in, that has settled out and we expect more normal revenue in the district,” LaGrange said.

LaGrange explained Northeast’s healthy fund balance had already been earmarked. “A large portion of that is committed at this point to the tank repair,” he said; the town is still working out the details on the bond. In addition, he said, “We also want to have some cushion in case we have to replace what used to be a $60,000 tank … approaching $90,000.”

Clarksville has had a lot of issues, predominantly related to operations and maintenance, a pump had to be replaced, and the town had to get the interceptor wells up and running to deal with high nitrate, LaGrange said. 

Font Grove has only $4,000 in its fund balance. “It’s tough because you have so few people there,” LaGrange said. There were 26 users in the district as of October 2021.

Clarksville’s rainy-day account has $24,000, LaGrange said, and was aided by the pandemic. “But we’ve eaten into that relatively heavy with these situations and the upcoming work down at the well fields,” he said.

“I’m not generally supportive across the board of Clarksville, especially because it was just raised last year. Northeast is a 20-percent increase on their usage, on their rate, which I think is excessive,” said Councilman William Hennessy. “Font Grove is quite high already, too. And it’s always been a problem. But the fund balances have been increasing.”

In the end, a vote on the rate increase wasn’t taken because it was clear the only member of the board in favor was LaGrange.