Saugus water and sewer rate hurting poor

SAUGUS- A plan to help low end water and sewer users has backfired for residents of a Route 1 trailer park who saw their bill jump by more than $75,000.Water bills went out in December and the owner of 846 Broadway Mobile Home Park was shocked when he saw his went from $25,000 to $103,000.”He came in here and showed me,” said Town Manager Andrew Bisignani. “I got a call from a condo association too. Their bill went up 150 percent.”Town Meeting members voted last spring to lower the minimum rate payment to give low-end water users a break. In doing so, however, they created two new tiers and bumped up the cost for higher end users.Because the trailer park uses only one meter for all 74 homes it has become one of the town’s high end users.Selectman Michael Kelleher said he received a few calls last weekend from the owner of the trailer park regarding his bill. Kelleher said he too was floored when he learned how high the bill had soared.”There are only 10 or 12 high end users but this group has fallen under that,” Kelleher said. “Most of these people are on fixed incomes. They can’t afford this.”When Kelleher raised the issue during a sewer commission meeting Thursday Selectman Peter Rossetti pointed out that Town Meeting sets water rates.However, the selectmen as the sewer commissioners followed Town Meeting’s lead and later voted a similar rate change for the sewer bills. Kelleher voted against it but not because he predicted the current outcome.”I wish I had been smart enough to vote against it because I knew this could happen,” he said, “It never even occurred to me.”Selectman Stephen Castinetti suggested any residential properties be pulled out of the high end user category and assessed as low end users.While Selectman Stephen Horlick warned that could be opening a can of worms, Rossetti added that it might even break the system.Rossetti said he’s been speaking with restaurant owners who fall in the high end category and many are instituting stringent conservation plans that could cut their water usage by up to 60 percent. Coupled with taking residential out of the equation Rossetti said water and sewer accounts wouldn’t be able to sustain themselves and the systems would collapse.Kelleher said he would take a water and sewer deficit over 74 mobile home dwellers going homeless.”That mobile home park cannot pay this bill,” he said. “We can’t let people lose their homes over this. No one knew any high end user would be residential.”Camp Dresser McKee officials as well as the town’s environmental attorney George Hailer agreed to sit down with Kathy Griffin, who consulted on the water and sewer rate change to review the situation.”We’ll spend a few days on this,” Hailer said, “but I don’t see any problem with modifying what you have. It just depends on what end result you want.”