Vote on sewer rate hike delayed
Procedural issue pushes proposal to April 6 council meeting
TROY, N.Y. >> City residents will have to wait another month to learn if they will see a 17.5 percent increase in the cost of sewer service.
While the City Council’s Finance Committee narrowly approved a proposal to change the formula for calculating the city’s sewer rate during its Thursday night meeting, the legislation did not find its way onto the agenda for the monthly meeting of the full council later that night amid questions about whether the group could legally consider the measure.
After the committee, which includes all nine council members, voted 5-4 in favor of the increase, council President Carmella Mantello, who opposed the proposal, said the legislation needed the approval of two-thirds of council members because it had been first introduced by the council’s Public Utilities Committee on Monday. She claimed that under the city charter, a two-thirds vote is required to advance any proposal to the agenda of a council meeting that happens seven days or fewer after the introduction.
The statute, however, actually pertains to final approval of legislation, requiring a two-thirds majority of the entire council to pass if it was in-
troduced less than a week prior to the meeting.
However, Section 2-26 of city code does include a provision that any legislation “must receive approval by majority vote of the standing committee at least two weeks prior to the regular Council meeting in order to be included on that meeting’s agenda.” An exception can be made, however, in the event of an emergency, as deemed by either the council president or the chairman of the committee considering the proposal.
By statute, the results of the committee vote would stand, and the proposal will go before the full council at its April 6 meeting.
City officials have said the increase — which is estimated to cost the average homeowner about $40 a year — is necessary to continue funding the city’s $35 million share of a statemandated effort to eliminate the release of raw sewage into the Hudson River. The increase would result from a change in the formula the city uses to calculate its sewer rate from 75 percent of its water rate to 100 percent, with Superintendent of Public Utilities Chris Wheland saying the city’s sewer rate would increase from $2.92 per 1,000 gallons to $3.43.
“This is a business decision, and it’s strictly that,” said Councilman John Donohue, R-District 6, who also chairs the Public Utilities Committee. “Saying no is noble on behalf of the taxpayer, but in the long run, it’s not serving the taxpayer.”
Donohue cited the decision last year to close the city’s two rundown municipal pools and its quarter-century battle with fiscal problems as examples
of how past shortsightedness by city leaders has cost taxpayers in the long run and warned of similar pitfalls the city could face if it doesn’t learn from those lessons.
“If we don’t maintain our infrastructure, we’re going to pay dearly down the road,” he said. “We’ve been damaged as a city by not planning ahead. This is something we need to do as a council to move the city forward.”
The $140 million, multi-municipality plan developed at the behest of the state Department of Environmental Conservation specifically targets the release of sewage into the river whenever stormwater systems are overwhelmed by heavy rain or other runoff and also includes the cities of Albany, Cohoes, Rensselaer and Watervliet and the village of Green Island. Troy officials expect to fund much of its cost through bonds that will be paid off over the next 12 years, but Wheland said former Mayor Lou Rosamilia failed to budget enough funding for the three-year-old program, leaving him to choose between performing work to prevent catastrophes like the February collapse of a sewer line that caused a massive sinkhole on Campbell Avenue and addressing state and federal mandates to reduce the amount of sewage flushed into the river.
The program is set up with a specific schedule of projects for each municipality, as well as a timetable for their completion, and Wheland explained that if the city doesn’t keep to that schedule, it could face fines in the neighborhood
of $10,000 a day from the state. The proposed rate hike was initially introduced in November, as the council was in the midst of contentious negotiations on the 2017 city budget, and members agreed through the Finance Committee to delay consideration until that budget was in place.
“I’d rather pay for brick and mortar for the city than pay the state for fines,” Wheland said Thursday.
The rate hike, Wheland explained, would guarantee the city continues to meet its commitment to the project at least through the next three or four years. That local cost was also responsible for a nearly 50 percent rate hike in 2013 and a 31 percent jump two years later, officials have said.
Both the state Comptroller’s Office and an independent auditor hired by the council last year recommended the city set up a reserve account to set aside money to repay the bonds, but Mantello has said that while she agrees with those recommendations, she envisioned that account being filled with state and federal grant money and other revenue that doesn’t come directly from city residents. Mantello, along with fellow Republicans Jim Gulli, District 1, and at-large representative Kimberly Ashe-McPherson, who also voted against the proposed rate hike, asked if the increase could at least be phased in over several years to ease the impact on taxpayers already dealing with the shock of a 14.5 percent property tax increase in the 2017 city budget.
“I would have rather seen a multi-year plan,”
Mantello said. “What’s to say we couldn’t do a staggered increase?”
Wheland countered by explaining that because the city had underfunded the program so far, anything less than the full increase would leave the city short on funding and lead to having to dip into operational funds that are badly needed to maintain the rest of the city’s aging sewer lines.
“We can’t stop all other functions within the department because we need [the money for the state-ordered project],” he said.
The fourth opposing vote came from Democratic atlarge Councilwoman Erin Sullivan-Teta, who said she could not stomach such a large rate increase almost immediately on top of the large tax increase. Her vote led to a heated moment during the committee meeting, however, as, after Mantello argued the two-thirds vote was necessary, Ashe-McPherson angrily tore into the council’s Democratic minority leader, Lynn Kopka, District 5, accusing Kopka and Mayor Patrick Madden of trying to browbeat Sullivan-Teta into changing her vote.
The confrontation continued even after the committee meeting had adjourned, with Kopka at one point storming out of the council chambers. Meanwhile, an emotional Sullivan-Teta said she was also upset that the city’s top two ranking Democrats had tried to intimidate her into changing her vote.
“This is my vote, and I have my own reasons for it,” she said. “I just can’t do this right after such a large tax increase.”