Saugus resolves mobile park water bill surge

SAUGUS – After more than a year of struggling with overpriced water and sewer bills life is about to get back to normal for residents of 846 Broadway Mobile Home Park.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani told the Board of Selectmen Tuesday that the park landlord agreed to lower rent bills by $73. Since the rent bills include water and sewer charges, that would bring the bills back to the level they were before things began to spiral out of control last spring.Park residents were shocked last year when they saw their water and sewer bills skyrocket more than $75,000. The increase was due to a plan that was designed to help low end users, but backfired just a little. The plan, put in place by town officials, created two new tiers that dropped the cost for very low end water and sewer users while bumping up expenses slightly for the town’s high end users.What the plan didn’t take into effect, however, were the 1,490 residents live on properties that like the mobile home park, support multiple homes with one meter. Because the park uses one meter for 74 homes the change in the billing made it the ninth largest water and sewer user in town and sent the bill soaring from $25,000 per year to $103,000.That increase was passed on to the homeowners, which resulted in a rent hike of $79 per household.Town officials scrambled to right the wrong but it has taken more than a year to put the park and other multi family/single meter properties back on par with other residents.The issue was finally rectified when the Board of Selectmen voted last fall to base the bills on average use.”We took the bill and divided it by the number of units in the complex and applied that to the tier system,” Bisignani said. “Wherever it fell, that’s what we charged.”Unfortunately, Bisignani added, the math didn’t quite add up for the town, therefore, “we’re eating the difference.”Bisignani said it took as long as it did because they wanted to wait a complete billing cycle to see how the numbers would play out.”It will officially go into effect May 15,” he said.He also said the billing would remain as such for the time being.”Fortunately we have substantial retained earnings to cover the difference,” he said. “So this is resolved for the time being.”