Financing needs debt-exclusion override
Voters, including the owners of 74 properties in the town center, will get to decide at Town Meeting May 2 whether to build the expanded wastewater system recommended by the committee that has been studying it for more than a year. If Town Meeting approves the project, voters would then need to approve a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion override at the polls on May 5.
After hearing and debating reports from Town Center Sewer Action Group (TCSAG) Chairman Chris Ashley over the past two weeks, the Finance Committee and the Board of Selectmen have each voted unanimously to add three articles to the Town Meeting warrant.
The first, which will appear as Article 24 in the warrant, empowers the Board of Selectmen to ask the state Legislature to pass a special act creating the new sewer district in town. Article 24 is a “home-rule” petition, which, if enacted, allows the town to set its own rules, as spelled out in the act, for what will be officially known as the Harvard Wastewater Management District.
The second article, Article 25, authorizes the town to borrow up to $2 million to build the system and requires the approval of two-thirds of Town Meeting voters as well as a majority of voters at the polls on May 5. Voters will also be asked to approve a third article to let the selectmen spend up to $80,000 to design an upgrade to the town’s wastewater plant should either of the first two articles fail to pass.
Although Article 25 is essential to paying for construction, Article 24 describes how the new system will operate. The article defines the boundaries of the district, which will encompass private homes, businesses, churches, schools, and municipal buildings in the town center. A final map was being prepared as this article went to press, and will include three to four additional residences.
Article 24 also establishes a three-person commission, each member appointed by the Board of Selectmen, to govern the district. Commissioners, one of whom would be a resident of the district, would serve three-year terms and would have the power to set rules, regulations, and fees for the wastewater system and to defer betterment and usage fees. They would also oversee construction of physical system, using the money borrowed on its behalf by the town.
Voters won’t see an enumeration of costs or a design for the system in any of the warrant articles. Those details are to be found in the recommendations TCSAG has presented to town boards and the public over the past three months. (For a summary, visit www.harvard.ma.us/Town%20Center%20Sewer%20Action%20Group.htm.)
Still, Article 24 does lay down some important rules that, if approved by the state Legislature, would become law. Following are some of its most important provisions:
- All owners in the district must pay betterment. Every property in the district, including those owned by the town, will be required to contribute to the cost of construction by paying a betterment fee. These fees will be assessed once construction is complete and can either be paid at once or over a 30-year period at a rate of interest not to exceed 5 percent. The average betterment will be roughly $21,000 per property, according to current TCSAG projections.
- Any property with a “failed” disposal system must connect. Any property whose waste disposal system is in “a state of failure,” as determined by either the town Board of Health or the state Department of Environmental Protection, will be required to connect to the system within six months of being notified by the wastewater commission. The cost of connection for each property is estimated to be $7,000, which includes the costs of a “grinder pump” and the physical connection to the sewer extension.
- For properties not “in failure,” connection is optional, but not a permanent right. Properties that are not “in failure” will not be required to connect to the system, but neither will property owners have a permanent “right” to connect, even though they have paid their betterment fee. TCSAG and the town boards hope that owners within the district choose to connect once the system is built, and sooner rather than later, but as time passes there are also likely to be competing requests for additional capacity as homeowners add rooms, businesses find new uses for their properties, or schools increase classroom use, and the available capacity of 12,400 gallons per day could ultimately be consumed.
- The commission will decide how unused capacity is allotted. Section 10(a) of Article 25, dubbed a “neutral growth” provision, makes clear that the commission cannot be compelled to connect a property to the system or grant an increase in capacity to an owner, and also sets some ground rules for deciding such requests. Owners who want to put up new buildings, add rooms, or make changes that increase their flow of wastewater must convince the commission either that the changes could have been done with a Title 5 compliant septic system or that they provide “a demonstrable benefit to the town.”
Although the provisions of the Article 24 home-rule petition are of greatest interest to town center residents, Articles 25 and 26 are the ones that determine the financial implications of an expanded sewer system for all town taxpayers. TCSAG Chairman Ashley has said repeatedly that there is little or zero risk to the town. The cost of constructing the system will be recovered entirely through the assessment of betterment fees, he said at the Tuesday meeting of the Board of Selectmen, and the town will ultimately pay no more for the system than what it will have to pay to bring the existing Mass. Ave. treatment plant into compliance with state DEP requirements whether the system is built or not. The cost of financing the system—the interest the town will pay on the $2 million it wants to borrow—will be reduced by the annual fees property owners will pay to use the system. And both the financing and costs, Ashley said, will be secured by “property worth millions of dollars.”
