VOORHEESVILLE — The Voorheesville School District has been paying the village $2,000 a year for public water. The Assistant Superintendent for Business Sarita Winchell announced this week that the school has just received a $50,000 water bill for this year. The district owes back payments.
"We weren’t reading all the meters," Winchell said. "We thought we were reading them correctly."

New water meters went in at the school in 2002, when the addition was added to the high school. There are two meters located at Clayton A. Bouton High with two readings on each meter. For the past three years, the district has only been reading one of the four readings, so essentially has only been paying a quarter of its actual bill.
"It’s time to pay the piper," Voorheesville village Mayor Jack Stevens told The Enterprise this week.

Stevens explained that the village physically sends an employee to each metered building every four years to read the meter. All the other years, the user records his own usage, Steven’s said that they split up the area they serve, into to four chunks and rotate which quadrant receives an official reading every four years.

This year, the cycle came to the school, and the village discovered the school’s error.

When the new meters were put in three years ago, they started at zero, so it’s easy to see how many gallons the school has used in the past three years and not paid for.

The main-line first reading, which has been accurately accounted and paid for all this time, read 799,200 gallons, he said. The second reading read 1,494,700 gallons; the third, 3,770; and the fourth, was 4,320,600 gallons.

Basically there are four water pipes, Stevens said.

Changing rates

Where things become a little more complicated is that last year, the village changed its water rates with the intention of making the larger users pay more and giving senior citizens and single people a break in their bills.

Previously, before last year, users paid $70 for the first 30,000 gallons. But, last year, the village lowered the minimum gallons of the flat rate. Now users pay $70 for 25,000 gallons, the larger users pay more through newly-created step increases.

For example, if a user consumes 25,001 to 100,000 gallons, then he pays $2.25 for every 1,000 gallons. Another example is that a user will pay $3 per every 1,000 gallons if he uses 300,001 to 400,000 and so on, up the step increment to the maximum of $4 per every 1,000 gallons if 500,001 gallons a year or more are used.

Anyone using over 100,000 gallons a year is considered a large user, Stevens said, which in Voorheesville means Atlas Copco and the school district.

Additionally, users who live outside of village limits have to pay double the rate for water. This means that Clayton A. Bouton High now has to pay $8 per 1,000 gallons, Winchell said.

School board members said that it would be cheaper to truck in water. The board also mentioned the option of drilling a well to water the athletic fields to cut back on purchasing needs from the village.

Stevens said that out-of-village users have always had to pay double; he said that it’s not a new rule , although people often think it is, he said what has changed is now there are step increases, so that the large users have to pay more.
"Our rate went up by 100 percent," Winchell said. "We were the only large user whose rate went up by 100 percent."

Increased use

Stevens was asked how come, in 2002, the village didn’t notice that the gallons the school was reporting was low. One would think that the total gallons recorded from 2001 would be much higher than the gallons recorded by the school in 2002 after reading only one meter.

Stevens responded, the school in 2002 started using a lot more water because of the building additions and watering of the new athletic fields, so there wasn’t a large drop in water use.
"When they first put in the fields, they were soaked; the contractor was over watering them," Stevens said.

Winchell said that she was going to be meeting with the village office to see what could be worked out since the $8-for-1,000-gallon rate was so expensive.
"I can’t not charge them," Stevens said. He said he was aware that the school wanted relief, but said it would be unfair to give a break to one user but not another.

The village would like to keep the school as a user, but if it wants to drill a well, Stevens thinks that’s a great idea, he said, but added that it costs a lot of money, too.
"They are gorgeous fields, but you’ll pay dearly for them," Stevens said. "Green fields are nice but you can’t have the whole place looking like Florida" without paying the price for it. He also said he wasn’t sure how often the pool has to be emptied and refilled but that’s a lot of gallons, too.

Board response

Board member John Cole told Winchell to remind the village of all the money the school district paid for infrastructure and helped out the village.

Board member Paige Macdonald asked if the elementary school, which is located within village limits, could pay the normal rather than double rate.

Stevens told The Enterprise that the elementary school has its own, single meter, and that is and has always been charged only the village rate.

School board President Robert Baron said that the district shouldn’t get excited yet and that he thinks the village is very reasonable and perhaps something could be worked out.

Calculations

Winchell said that the school doesn’t actually owe $50,000, although that’s what the bill is for, because the back pay was calculated on the new rate which is only one year old.

Stevens agreed, saying that the computer just calculated the bill at the new rate. His recommendation to the village board is that for two years the bill be adjusted to reflect the old rate which, for outside of the village, would be $4 per 1,000 gallons rather than the $8 for this year.

This new total calculation, however, will not be as accurate had the meters just been read originally. Now, there is no way to tell on the meter how many gallons were used each of the three years, Stevens said.

He went on to say that the school could argue that, two years ago, it used most of the gallons and has greatly cut back since then, but there is no way to really tell. He will propose dividing the overall gallons by three years, charging two-thirds at the old rate and one-third at the new rate.

Stevens said that, with the village’s $126,000 loan for the new water tank and piping, the village is not making any profit off the selling of water to users outside of the village.

One day, he hopes to be able to provide more out-of-village homeowners with public water; currently the village has 200 outside users, he said.
Atlas Copco, within the village limits, is the largest water consumer by far, Stevens said. "Their water usage is astronomical. It make the school look like a drop in the bucket," he said.

The mayor also said that everyone across the village this year is seeing an increase in their bill because all homeowners received new meters last year. Voorheesville schools put in the new meters three years ago along with their capital improvements, but everyone else just got them last year. With new technology counting every drop, which the old meters did not, and because many of the old meters where old and not very accurate, on average, each homeowner was getting 25 percent of their water for free, Stevens said.