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Perry Township Municipal Authority addresses complaints following sewage rate hike

By Mike Tony mtony@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read
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Perry Township Municipal Authority Secretary/Treasurer Kate Petrosky responded to resident concerns Thursday following the authority's recent sewage rate increase, as did Solicitor Daniel C. Hudock (middle) and Engineer David A. Coldren (right).

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Auditor Jeffrey J. McCue (left) went over a Perry Township Municipal Authority customer billing analysis Thursday amid resident concerns about the authority's recent sewage rate increase.

STAR JUNCTION — The Perry Township Municipal Authority at its monthly meeting addressed the concerns of residents discontented with a recent sewage rate hike.

The increase bumps residential rates up by $10 to $80 per month, and became effective last month.

Several residents attended the meeting to find out more about what prompted the increase, and Whitsett resident Yvonne Diggs presented a petition signed by about two dozen township residents in the small village requesting to know more along those lines.

Commercial rates will increase by $10.00 for each 4,000 gallons of water used per month.

The rate increase marks the PTMA’s second in the past two years, as the authority increased residential rates from $65 to $70 effective July 2017. That increase was the first since operations began in 2007.

Authority officials said they were taking a financial hit from factors ranging from a small customer base to long-term loan payments and a greater frequency of repairs to an aging sewage system.

“We have a small system. It’s not growing,” PTMA Secretary/Treasurer Kate Petrosky said, adding that the authority has gotten only nine new customers since the system began operations in 2007. “We have this debt that’s going to be here, as you can see, for years and years.”

That debt, Auditor Jeffrey J. McCue explained, includes a roughly $2.6 million loan from Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PennVEST) that won’t be paid off until 2037 and a $403,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service loan that won’t be paid off until 2053.

“They are long debts, but the rates are very reasonable,” McCue said.

” … That’s just the way these organizations finance these projects.”

PennVEST notified PTMA in March that it was concerned about the authority’s financial state of affairs, requesting that it come up with a corrective action plan.

“They didn’t feel we had enough money to cover our debt service,” Petrosky said, adding that there were times she prayed there was enough money in the authority’s bank account to cover the $8,849 that PennVEST automatically withdraws on the first of every month.

PennVEST indicated it viewed PTMA’s rate increase as showing “strong resolve” to correct its financial situation, Petrosky reported.

The rate increase will provide roughly $40,000 in annual revenue in addition to the $279,000 in the 2018 budget’s anticipated revenue. It’s slated to go toward building a capital improvement fund to cover the cost of current and future repairs to the system.

Petrosky said that PTMA’s system dating back to 2007 has required more repairs in recent years. System maintenance has included repairs to lighting, generators, decanters, grinder pumps, UV bulb replacement, and blower replacement in the past three years.

The authority’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit was recently renewed with additional testing requirements imposed by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) which required capital expenditures totaling over $30,000 to become compliant with the new permit requirements, Petrosky noted.

The PTMA serves approximately 365 residential and commercial customers in the villages of Wickhaven, Whitsett and Banning, plus Rehoboth Church Road, Blue Top Road, Harmony Church Road, Old Route 51 and Fayette City Boulevard.

The authority owns and maintains one sewage treatment plant located in Wickhaven and three pump stations, with approximately 14.5 miles of sanitary sewer lines. The Authority began operations in 2007 with Phase I of the sewer project and completed Phase II in 2012, projects financed through grants and low-interest loans from PennVEST and the USDA Rural Utilities Service.

According to a customer billing analysis that McCue went over with meeting attendees, the authority’s monthly cost of serving customers broke down to $74.85 in 2016, nearly $10 more than its actual residential monthly billing of $65 that year. Its projected customer cost per month for 2018 is $72.09, more than the $70 residents were charged until September.

“There is no fat (in this budget),” Petrosky said. “No employees except me. We don’t have vehicles. We don’t have a big office building.”

Petrosky declined to rule out future rate increases.

“We could never say that,” she said. “We’d be lying to you.”

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