To the Editor:

At the recent sewer bond public forum, the town supervisor explained why the town does not follow the sewer use law. Grinder pump electricity is not reimbursed after the annual pump reading because in some cases the cost of postage exceeds the reimbursement amount. It was also stated that, due to turnover of home ownership, it is difficult to get reimbursement checks delivered to former homeowners.

At the board meeting that immediately followed this public forum, there was no mention of changing the sewer law. Going forward, the town has the option of continuing to ignore its own law or modify the law to reflect reality.

I submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to get the annual readings from my house since it has been four years since reimbursement was issued. The FOIL response included: “… Please note the meter readings electrical usage is collected annually and not logged in records management until time of reimbursement ….”

I filed an appeal because the information I requested is available but was not included in the response. New York state as the New York State Committee on Open Government requires a written appeal response to be sent within 10 days to the submitter. The appeal was ignored; no response was sent.

A few weeks after the appeal deadline, a representative from the sewer district visited my house and, in contrast to the FOIL response, stated no information is collected annually. They only look at the amperage reading to see if a grinder pump problem might exist. It was reiterated that annual reimbursement is not done due to postage costs and cited a homeowner whose pump is used two hours per month.

The town should not hold off reimbursement because of the low electric usage of one (or perhaps a few) houses. Since no data is collected annually, I do not see how the town can determine when it becomes cost-effective to reimburse homeowners.

In general, to avoid the costs of printing and mailing reimbursement checks, the town could credit the homeowner’s sewer tax with the reimbursement amount.

To avoid any problem of locating former homeowners, the town could take a final grinder pump reading when a house is sold, as is done for other utilities.

Kenneth Guarino

Berne