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Date: 1/10/2023
GRANBY – The Selectboard gathered at the Senior Center for their first meeting of 2023 on Jan. 3 and started the year off with a discussion related to an error to a resident’s sewer bill that caused some confusion on how it happened.
According to Town Administrator Chris Martin, the board had in December signed their commitment for the first half of 2023, a standard practice for the town as the board also serves as sewer commissioners for the town. Now just starting the new year off, it appears an error was made that slipped past the board as Martin added he received a call from the owner of Five Corners LLC. questioning why his number of Equivalent Dwelling Units (EDU) increased from 1 to 4 on his bill.
An EDU is used for water services and one EDU equals the amount of water used by one single-family, residential dwelling unit as defined as .28 acre-foot of water per year. For sewer services, one EDU equals the daily flow, discharged by a typical single family dwelling unit.
Martin explained that because the town does not have water meters on their sewer users, they follow a state created chart that labels what EDU’s equal in gallons. Martin also noted that a business like a salon could see 75-300 gallons a day based on the number of chairs in house.
“When someone wants to connect to the sewer, we find out what they have, go to the chart and figure out how much water we think they will use based on the chart from the Department of Environmental Protection,” Martin said.
Martin also made note that Five Corners LLC. is the owner of the known Five Corners Plaza on West State Street that is made up of four units and two offices including a bike repair shop, Dunkin, a salon, and a Verizon store. The town decided based on the state chart that this location uses 330 gallons a day, making their bill 1 EDU a month. Martin did add that the chart they use was brought in back in 1994 and they are still using the same guideline as there has not been a change at the state level.
After receiving the call from the owner of the property, Martin immediately knew neither he or the Selectboard had made any change and needed to figure out what happened. Martin added that when asking the owner if he called the Collectors Office about this issue, the owner was told the change was made by the board and they were the ones to go to with this question.
Martin said after the town was able to get into communication with the Collector’s Office, they were informed that a collector in the office had claimed to have had a conversation with Martin and Highway Superintendent David Desrosiers about making this specific change.
“I never had a conversation with her number one,” Martin said. “David never had a conversation with her. She went and changed the number of billable units on her own without any authority from the Sewer Commissioners, which are the Board of Selectmen.”
Martin added he already informed Five Corners LLC. that the town would be issuing an abatement on his bill for 3 units to make the payment accurate. Now Martin said he will have to go through the actual detail of the commitment made last month to see if any other changes were made without the authority of the Selectboard to avoid this situation in the future.
“My biggest concern is the collector went in and changed it without proper authority and I have a concern about that,” Martin added. “I haven’t talked to her yet, I believe a letter should come from the board acting as Sewer Commission asking her what occurred and took place. We need to make sure there’s no other changes.”
Selectboard Chair Glen Sexton added that they needed to address this with the collector who made the error and to give a reminder that a decision like that falls to the Selectboard who also act as the Sewer Commission.
“We want to rectify that before getting more calls,” Sexton said.