The Board of Selectmen added one more element to its near-final plan for a town center sewer system: a draft charter for a nine-member, selectmen-appointed building committee to oversee its construction.
The building committee proposal, which was made at the April 21 selectmen’s meeting, joins two other documents that outline how a town center sewer system would be financed and built if approved by voters at Annual Town Meeting on May 2. They are the design and finance plan devised by the Town Center Sewer Action Group (TCSAG) and submitted to selectmen in January, as well as a more recent TCSAG statement of recommended policies and financial “circuit breakers” to guide the selectmen as they take responsibility for its implementation. All three documents will be discussed and voted on by the selectmen at a special public meeting in Town Hall on Tuesday, April 26.
“The reason we’re having our meeting next week … is so that we can hear what [stakeholders] have to say and, taking that into account, make a final judgment as to what the actual final financial parameters of the plan … are actually going to be,” said Board of Selectmen Chairman Leo Blair in a phone interview this week.
“We want the voters to be able to rely on conclusively that [this] is the system and the plan that we intend to implement,” Blair said. “There’s not going to be any fudge factor … My point to the voters at Town Meeting will be that this is what we’ve developed, we think it’s a great plan, we think it works for the town and whatever way you vote, this is what you’re voting for.”
Before the selectmen can take any action, town voters must approve a $2 million debt authorization to fund construction—Article 25—at Town Meeting and again in town elections on May 5. Town Meeting voters must also approve a home rule petition—Article 24—that defines the boundaries of the new sewer district and establishes how it will be governed.
The proposal for a Town Center Sewer Building Committee (TCSBC) was drawn up by Selectman Tim Clark and Town Administrator Tim Bragan. TCSBC’s mission would be to guide the sewer project from its present status through construction to completion.
As proposed, the committee would consist of nine members. Four would be nonvoting and include the town administrator, the finance director, a member of the Board of Health, and a member of the Water Commission.
Voting members would consist of five registered Harvard voters, two of whom must be owners of real property within the wastewater district. The two town center property owners on the committee would be recommended to the selectmen by a caucus of town center owners. Requests for a voting membership would be made at the first meeting following May 5 town elections, and appointments would be made following the selectmen’s appointment process.
Over the past several weeks, TCSAG members have reached out to sewer district residents to hear their concerns and make reasonable adjustments to their original recommendations. The repayment period for betterments was lengthened from 20 to 30 years. A larger portion of the cost of upgrading the Mass. Ave. treatment plant—66 percent—was allocated to the town. Property owners in the district will be guaranteed a right to connect to the new system for 30 years. A “growth neutral” clause was added to Article 25 to control unwanted development.
In addition, the selectmen, with the advice of TCSAG, whose charter expires at Town Meeting, have drafted a list of “guiding principles” and financial circuit breakers that can best be viewed as a pledge to voters and town center residents by the selectmen to stay within the carefully drawn bounds of the project. Proposed circuit breakers—any violation that would require the selectmen to return to Town Meeting “for review and reauthorization”—include the following:
- Total project cost estimate exceeds $2 million
- Financing rates “become unfavorable”
- The average betterment assessment increases by more than 15 percent [beyond current estimates of $21,000]
- Cost per taxpayer increases beyond $10 per household
- “Projected or actual connection rates and resulting private contribution to treatment plant operations and maintenance falls significantly below survey rates”
“Some of the [town center residents] who have expressed concerns have said … the town is not paying enough of the cost… That’s because they discount the fact that the existing plant that is already there is being thrown into the deal by the town,” said Blair. “We’ve got a capital investment in the existing sewer system [which serves the schools and new library] of $950,000. That’s what it cost the town, the voters, to put that system in. And since we’ve put it in, of course, we’ve had an operating cost of roughly $100,000 a year. So the town’s in for all of that plus a third of the cost of the expansion of the system. I think that’s really equitable.
—Leo Blair, chairman
Board of Selectmen
“To the folks who are concerned about the betterment,” Blair added, “I say, if you asked the average taxpayer, who does not live in the town center … and said, ‘We’re going to offer you the following program for $21,000 paid over 30 years: we will guarantee you your septic; if your septic fails, we’ll take care of it; if it needs to be replaced, we’ll take care of it’… I don’t think there’s a person in town that wouldn’t sign up for it in a minute because … the folks outside of town are looking at Title 5–compliant systems that can run from $30,000 to $70,000.
“We can’t and shouldn’t create a system that conforms to the specific needs of specific people and treats them differently because we’re trying to solve a townwide problem,” said Blair. “We have wellhead protection issues, we have the schools and municipal buildings to take care of, and …if this plan doesn’t go forward now … I would think that the next time that Harvard could take a serious run at this would be several years from now—three to five years, at least. And between now and then the likelihood that residents in the town, several of them, would have systems that failed and had to be replaced with mounded systems costing many tens of thousands of dollars is very significant.”
