By Donna Westfall – June 19, 2026
During public comment at the Monday night City Council meeting June 15th, several people go up to talk.
My public comment centered on doubling the connection fees which haven’t been done in 18 years. While our City Council approved the doubling of water and sewer rates, not one word was spoken about connection fees. That goes to the issue of, “Who pays for expansion?” Along with that comes the very important question, “What is the expansion figure?” And why were those reports destroyed or gone missing?
So if expansion is 70% instead of 11.8%, that is supposed to be paid for by developers’ connection fees. We certainly have a great deal of development going on in our town. I’ve requested financials from Finance Director, Linda Leaver. How much has the city collected in connection fees since 2007? What have those funds been used for? Have any loans been taken out? If yes, for what?
I’m waiting to hear about sitting down with her this coming week to go over these things.
About expansion. Here’s a simple example: The generator purchased was twice the size of the previous one purchased for the upgrade and expansion of the sewer system. What about the MBR (Membrane Bioreactor) that combines traditional biological processes with physical membrane filtration to clean water. We didn’t have one of those before 2007. It ran about $30 million to put in that system. It’s considered advanced wastewater treatment technology.
On the other hand, the inflow and infiltration is the process of storm water and groundwater entering sanitary sewer systems. In other words, when we get an excess amount of rain, it overloads the system, forces untreated sewage into the environment, and drives up treatment costs. Some ways to fix this is to see that the pipes are in good shape, not broken or leaking. But listen to this. Our city hasn’t put a camera through there or conducted any smoke tests for about 20 years. One would think that making sure the pipes were in good shape would be a priority. I requested a copy of that report Let’s see if it’s missing.
We were told by former Public Works Director, Jim Barnts, that we had to double the sewer rates in 2007 in order to pay off the $43.8 million loan to the State. No one mentioned that connection fees can also be used to pay down the loan: Sewer connection fees are commonly used by local municipalities and utility districts to pay down state and federal infrastructure loans.
When I asked the city how much of the loan has been paid down from connection fees, they didn’t have that information.
Want to watch my public comment about fraud and corruption? Click here:
https://youtu.be/RHAa2e0YHrY,https://youtu.be/CzQide8uybk,https://youtu.be/1THpXsOo5L4
