Are we paying more?

While watching a Town meeting, a public speaker and Commissioner Clottey brought up the new sewer rates. After taking a close look at my current sewer bill and comparing it to last years, mine has gone up considerably. While it's been said the town's millage rate has not been raised, and that this should indicate we are doing well, this may be misleading. It would appear the town has found other ways to raise funds from us. From what I've heard, what was once paid out of the funds raised by the millage is now coming by way of charging higher fees. I could be mistaken and just don't know the overall impact of all the costs, or how they are funded.

This begs the question. Are we paying more or less, in total, for town services than we were last year, and if so, by what amount?
Thom

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Responses:

It was very obvious why sewer rates went up to certain customers. For some strange reason, the Town was keeping the sewer rates artificially low for customers in the south part of Town. What this means is that the Town was paying for partial sewer costs for these customers while customers in the north part of Town were paying full price for their sewer services. The Town government should NEVER be paying for sewer charges that should be paid by the customers. Why this comment was made on this website is a mystery to me as the writer of the original comment should know better.
Dennis Richie

Dear Mr. Ritchie,
Like to thank you first for sharing your concern and the information you provided. Hope this is the beginning of a dialog to share this and other concerns which affects us all. Information was gathered from prior town meetings and from town hall regarding this subject. Found out quickly it becomes very complicated. This is due to the combination of Ft. Lauderdale and Pompano Beach providing the water and sewer utilities, along with the billings for each.

The entire town is served by Pompano for our sewers. For water, it depends on where you live. Around Pine Ave to the south, Ft. Lauderdale supplies water and north of that is served by Pompano.

To further complicate this is how the billing is accomplished for each. Many years ago the Town used to direct bill for utilities. Then it was handed over to Ft. Lauderdale which added, along with the water bill, the sewer bill because its directly determined by water usage. So in the areas water is provided by Ft. Lauderdale and billed accordingly, the bill for sewers is also included, and the sewer proceeds are then forwarded on to Pompano. For the remaining areas (north) both utilities are directly billed by Pompano.

During the annexation of Sea Ranch Condos back in the late 90's they requested to be charged the same for utilities as everyone else in the town at that time. It's not clear why it was done, but the buildings were placed under the towns master sewer contract, thus Ft. Lauderdale would bill the condo's and then forward the funds to town and then the town would pay Pompano under its contract.

The issue which is unclear is when the cost, due to increases from the providing cities, exceeded the amount collected from the SRL condos. Former Mayor Parker spoke on this during a town meeting and said it was only recently. The town reported it was for a number of years. This has since been addressed as the condos are now charged and billed the same as other such buildings. This leads back to the subject posted at the beginning. The concern is, to put it simply; it seems from the town meetings, the current increases were necessary because costs were being raised by the providing cities. However, the increases in our utility bills, as voted on by the commission, appears to be greater then the increases from Pompano and Ft. Lauderdale.

In addition, hotel properties, for one, seem to have gone up even more than other properties due to a change in the prior method of billing. What has since been found out is that the town is currently doing a study on this issue and once done more information will be available.
Thom

To: Connie Hoffmann [From E-mail of 11/18/2011]
Hi Connie, I do not know if you are aware but on the CIC website Dennis Richie, who I am told is the president of town's Property Owners Association, makes a claim that the reason why sewer rates had to go up for some is because some people in the south end of the town were just not paying enough.

My question is whether you agree that my hotel's wastewater rates went up because the town was subsidizing my hotel? Did the town ever subsidize my hotel's sewer rate? If so when and by how much?
Sincerely,
Arthur Franczak

To: Arthur Franczak [From Hoffmann E-mail of 11/26/11]
Arthur, I apologize for not responding earlier. For some reason your email was delivered to my junk mail inbox, and I only found it yesterday when I went to empty the junk mail box.

No, it is not accurate to suggest that the Town's wastewater rates went up because your hotel was being subsidized. I am not sure if that was a serious question or if you intended sarcasm, but I went to the CIC website to read Mr. Richie's post, which I think reflects some confusion on his part about the reasons for the rate increase, although I I understand what he was getting at. The second response from someone named Thom is far more accurate and notes that its a complicated matter, as it is.
I think you are familiar with this, but if not, here's a brief summary of what happened. I brought to the Commission's attention in the summer of 2010 that the Town's sewer fund had been subsidizing the sewer bills for the 4 Sea Ranch Condominium buildings for almost a decade. You can go back to the archives of the Commission meetings throughout the fall of 2010 and read the various reports on that subject. Former Mayor Parker and several others asserted the Town had "promised" at the time of annexing those properties into the Town that the condos would not pay higher sewer rates than the rest of the Town residents.
The subsidy was not significant in the early years, but grew as Pompano Beach raised the rates they charged their direct customers; the Sea Ranch Condos were - and still are- direct customers of Pompano Beach for sewer service. But the playing field changed when additional unincorporated areas were annexed into the Town, who were also sewer customers of Pompano. At that point, the Town probably should have revisited the issue of the Sea Ranch Condos' sewer subsidy but did not.
By the time I was hired and started asking why in the world we were paying the SR Condos' bills, the sewer fund actually had an operating deficit because of a combination of rate increases by Pompano and the subsidy of the Sea Ranch condos. (Please note that, although we were paying the SR Condo's bills to Pompano, we turned around and billed the condos for sewer service at the Town's rates - which were lower than Pompano's rates.) The Commission asked me to bring back a rate structure that would 1) move to equity between rates paid by the property owners in the north of the Town and those in the south end of Town, 2) stop the subsidy of the Sea Ranch condos, and 3) start to replenish the sewer fund reserve so there would be funds available for repairs to the aging sewer infrastructure.
The easiest way to achieve all three objectives was to adopt the same sewer rates that Pompano Beach was charging charged to direct customers in the north end of Town. So in the winter of 2011, the Commission adopted the Pompano Beach sewer rates - with the 25% surcharge Pompano charges built into the rate- as Lauderdale by the Sea's sewer rate structure. As I've explained to you before, the 25% surcharge is why our rates look higher than Pompano's if you compare our rates to the rates in Pompano's code of ordinances. (Which is the answer to the question posed by Thom on the CIC website.) The new rates eliminated the subsidy of the Sea Ranch Condos.
And here is the answer to the inquiry you made on that topic to the Town Clerk. The Town advised the management of all four Sea Ranch condos to fill out the paperwork with Pompano so that billing for their sewer service went directly to them from Pompano, instead of being routed through the Town. Three of the four did that when requested in the Spring. The fourth condo, Sea Ranch North, did not switch to Pompano billing until the end of June and only after I made numerous phone calls to them. However, that did not pose a problem as they were paying the same rates to us as Pompano was billing us on their behalf.
I hope this provides some clarity to the issue.
Connie Hoffmann
Town Manager