Uniontown council looks to raise sewage rates, recalls parking enforcement officer
Uniontown City Council last week introduced an ordinance that would impose a $5 increase in the city’s monthly residential sewage rate.
In a 4-0 vote, council voted to approve introducing the ordinance, which would bump up residents’ monthly sewage fee to $33 from $28, effective Sept. 1.
“Your operational costs since 2016 have exceeded your income by the tune of $250,000 a year,” City Engineer John Over told council. “You’ve been operating at a deficit for the last couple of years, and you’ve depleted your sewage fund.”
Over said he had done a study at the start of last year, resulting in a proposal to institute a $3 monthly sewage increase in 2017 and an additional $1 increase at the beginning of this year.
“But you’re already at this point, because nothing got done in 2017 when (a majority) of you weren’t on the board at that time,” Over said. “You’ve already spent a half a million dollars you didn’t have. So now you have to catch up.”
Over said that residential rates were kept as low as possible per the proposed ordinance, noted that commercial sewage rates will undergo a greater increase. He also indicated that the rates remain cheaper than they are in many surrounding municipalities.
Over said it would be “wonderful” to be able to tie an inflation rate into an ordinance such as the one proposed, so that rates would go up accordingly along with the consumer price index.
“This absolutely is long overdue in the city,” Over said.
In other business, council reinstated its parking enforcement officer after a six-month layoff, the city’s latest step toward instituting and enforcing two-hour free parking downtown.
Council in a 4-0 vote reinstated the position of parking enforcement officer effective Wednesday and recalled former officer Evan Gross from layoff status, also effective Wednesday, at a rate of $12 per hour up to 20 hours a week.
Council recently advertised that it would begin enforcing two-hour free parking, which council approved in March.
“The final step will actually be enforcing it, which is what Evan will help us do,” council member Martin Gatti said.
The free two-hour parking at all designated spaces within the downtown business district will be enforced primarily by electronic chalking.
Gross was temporarily laid off in January as council signaled it would re-evaluate and reorganize parking enforcement in the city, with several council members condemning what they said was chronically overzealous ticketing of city motorists.
The city collected $45,235 in parking violations in 2017, just $54 short of what it collected in the previous three years combined.
Blair Jones was the only council member to vote against temporarily laying off Gross in January. Jones was absent from last Tuesday’s council meeting.
Jones had asked his fellow councilmen in January if they understood that the parking enforcement officer that council voted to lay off was a union employee, but Solicitor J.W. Eddy replied that a temporary layoff would not elicit union opposition, as opposed to a termination. Gross had belonged to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), according to City Clerk Kim Marshall.
City police Chief Jason Cox reported at last week’s meeting that he had explained the shift to two-hour free parking at various downtown business establishments over the past several weeks.
Parking in the off-street area adjacent to the Fayette County Public Service Building will remain metered, per the ordinance council adopted in March.
Motorists who violate two-hour parking will be charged a $25 fine if paid within 24 hours or $50 beyond that. Any vehicle ticketed again within a 90-day period will be subject to a $50 fine within 24 hours and $100 beyond that length of time.