PITTSBORO — Town Manager Chris Kennedy announced last Monday a substantial revision to the town’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2022 in the board of commissioners’ second and final public hearing on the subject.
In the first budget rendition presented to the public on May 10, water and sewer utility rates for town customers were recommended to increase by 45% and 35% respectively, as the News + Record previously reported. The proposed increases already represented a change to the draft town staff originally presented to the board of commissioners at its budget retreat last month, which called for 53% and 68% increases to water and sewer utility rates.
On Monday, though, Kennedy announced he’d found a way to minimize the rate increases to 43% for water and 18% for sewer.
“We have tweaked and bent and done everything with those numbers as best we can in my opinion,” Kennedy said.
Much of the sewer utility rate increase was designed to fund installation of a force main connecting Pittsboro to Sanford’s wastewater treatment plant. The project is anticipated to cost about $248,000, 65% of which Chatham Park Investors have agreed to pay. With some financial finagling, Kennedy and his team were able to reclassify and defer some of the expense for which utility users are responsible.
“And what that does is it reduces the overall burden,” Kennedy said. “Basically there’s a mathematical dollar amount that says, ‘OK, these are how we filter the budget through, and this is what our deficit remains that we need a rate increase to overcome.”
But the rate hikes for users are still substantial, Kennedy admitted, even if lower than in previous versions of the proposed budget.
“A manager with more tenure probably wouldn’t have the you-know-what’s to propose that,” he said, laughing.
Kennedy and the commissioners emphasized, though, that increases are necessary to fund critical infrastructure development projects that will address the town’s ongoing water contamination issues and capacity shortages.
“We are in a very pivotal time in Pittsboro as growth is promised,” said Commissioner Michael Fiocco. “It does take investment on the public side as well — that’s what I recognize our rates as. We do have some big water and sewer projects, not the least of which is trying to get PFAS out of our water.”
For more than a year, town staff and the board have worked to mitigate alarming concentrations of PFAS, a family of carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, that are present in Pittsboro’s drinking water. A recent nationwide study by Consumer Reports identified the town as having the highest PFAS levels of any water supply in the U.S. To improve water quality, the board of commissioners approved a roughly $2.6 million project to install granular activated coal filters at the town’s water treatment facility within about a year, $1.4 million is covered in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2021-22. The advanced filtration is designed to remove at least 90% of all PFAS from the water supply.
Besides improving water quality, town staff and the board of commissioners are working to expand infrastructure before new real estate and commercial development push water and sewer allocations beyond capacity.
“I just want to commend Mr. Kennedy and town staff for their diligence in working through this,” Mayor Jim Nass said. “The news that we’re seeing some reduction in the sewer part of this equation is very much appreciated, I know, by myself and by members of the board.”
The commissioners did not vote to approve or reject the proposed budget, allowing 24 hours after the meeting for residents to submit written comments in accordance with public hearing requirements. The board was expected to adopt the proposed budget at a special meeting at 10 a.m. on Thursday. Residents interested in attending may join via Zoom. Details are provided on the town’s website, pittsboronc. gov.
“We think that our citizens and residents will be pleased with these operational advances that we’re proposing,” Kennedy said. “... We’re very hopeful that people will find value in what we’re proposing, and that they’ll feel like they’re investing in a better future for Pittsboro.”
Reporter D. Lars Dolder can be reached at dldolder@chathamnr.com and on Twitter @ dldolder