Saugus Town meeting settles water rates

SAUGUS – Residents of the 846 Broadway Mobile Home Park were kept on the edge of their seats Monday while Town Meeting members debated their water bills, which were eventually changed in their favor.
Meeting members spent nearly 30 minutes debating changes made in the water rate structure in 2007 that resulted in water bills that, in the case of the mobile home dwellers, went up 150 percent.
The park residents were not the only ones affected by the change. A plan to help low end water and sewer users backfired for anyone living in a multi-unit dwelling that calculated water and sewer rates through one meter.
During the 2007 annual spring Town Meeting, members voted 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. But because the mobile home park and the Housing Authority, along with several other complexes in town, use only one meter for all residents, they became the town’s high end users.
The same thing happened with sewer rates when selectmen changed them to match Town Meeting water rates.
Monday meeting members voted to change the method of calculating the water rate once again. This time the change would essentially knock the mobile home park bills back from $103,000 to $25,000, which is where it was before the rates were changed.
The debate, however, which centered around various possible amendments and other minor concerns, kept the nearly 50 mobile home owners that packed Town Meeting on edge.
Les Martin, director of the Mobile Home Association voiced the groups’ concerns.
“We’re not asking for special favors for the park,” he told meeting members. “We just want to pay the same as everyone else. Am I wrong to ask that?”
Martin said he did a quick survey of resident in the park. Of the 49 who were home, 35 were over the age of 65, 20 were disabled, 17 were veterans and two were disabled veterans. He said he didn’t think it was fair to ask any of them to pay more than any other single-family homeowner.
Park resident Lenny Melanson told meeting members he lived with his wife, had one bathroom and no lawn and didn’t even wash his car so he wondered why his water bill should be so much higher than single family home owners on the Lynn Fells Parkway.
“It’s not right what you people are doing to us,” he said. “I’m up 150 percent but the people of the Fells Way, they have lawns, they water their lawns they have 2-3 cars they probably wash . . . Nobody represents us.”
Town Meeting member Maureen Dever attempted to table the issue pending more information but that bid failed 32-13.
Meeting members eventually unanimously passed the article to recalculate the bills but park residents were still confused by the debate.
When asked if she felt relieved one woman said she still was still trying to figure out what the vote meant for her. Others nodded in agreement admitting the sometimes seemingly convoluted discussion eluded them.
When Selectman Michael Kelleher told Melanson his bill would go back to what it was before the rate change Melanson simply said, “good. I’m happy then.”