Depot Road residents are breathing easier this week, now that they have been assured they will not be charged betterment fees for the new line connecting Harvard’s municipal water supply to the Devens water system. At an Oct. 20 meeting, the two members of the Water Commission agreed that charging a betterment fee to the property owners along Depot Road for this project was not appropriate.
The town voted for the Devens water connection project at a Special Town Meeting in February 2023 to eliminate the town’s reliance on the two Pond Road wells, which are both contaminated with PFAS. A second affirmative vote to increase funds for the project was cast at a May 2024 Special Town Meeting. But there was no mention of betterment fees prior to or during either of those meetings. The first time the Water Commission discussed the fees was at a November 2024 meeting, five months after the project had started.
Betterment fees are typically charged to residents whose house values are “bettered” when a town installs public water or sewer lines along the roads they live on. But the commission acknowledged from the beginning that this project was intended to bring safe drinking water to town center, and the benefit to Depot Road residents was only a side effect of the location chosen to install the new line. They also acknowledged there had been no public discussion of betterment fees prior to the vote.
After that initial discussion, the commission charged David Smith, who was the Department of Public Works director at that time, as well as new Town Administrator Dan Nason to research betterment fees in neighboring towns. That research prompted Smith to suggest a betterment fee of $25,000 for each of the residential properties along Depot Road at a commission meeting last February. Commission members reiterated at that meeting that this was not a typical betterment situation, because the main beneficiaries of the project were the residents, businesses, and municipal facilities (including the schools) in town center.
Not the intended beneficiaries
A few months later, in April, about 25 Depot Road residents expressed their outrage over the suggested betterment fee at a Water Commission meeting, saying they were not the intended beneficiaries, and there had been no mention of the fees until after the town voted on the project. Commission members were not yet ready to make a decision at that meeting, nor at any subsequent meeting until October. The delay was partially caused by a shortage of members. The new chair, Chris Mitchell, was a commission of one for a few months after Cindy Russo’s term expired and longtime commission member Kyle Hedrick stepped down soon after she left.
But the commission finally found a new member, Jeff Tingle, and Oct. 20 was his first meeting. Because of the inexperience of the two members, the wording of the motion to charge no betterment fees to the Depot Road residents for this project had to be amended a few times; and in the end, the members neglected to vote on the final motion. But the various motions that were made and seconded by the two-member commission seemed to be enough assurance for the Depot Road residents in the room, who left the meeting quietly as the commission moved on to the next agenda topic.
