DUBOIS – After being presented with the latest version of the Northwest Clearfield County Multi-Municipal Comprehensive Plan the DuBois City Council were upset about what they found regarding water and sewer.
DuBois City Council took umbrage with a part of the plan that referenced a regional water/sewer authority.
“I thought we made it very clear we did not want water and sewer in this,” said City Council Member Diane L. Bernardo.
Council has been against the plan’s inclusion of what they interpret as mandating a municipal authority. They believe that an authority would only lead to higher rates for the community.
“There is no reason to study the cash flow [of the water and sewer system] unless to find out the size of the loan needed to wrest the system from DuBois,” said City Solicitor Tony Cherry.
The study of municipalities’ water and sewer systems’ income, expenses and debt are laid out in steps one and two of the plan. Step five has the committee doing a budget analysis to see what is needed from loans and billing to acquire the systems and any improvements down the road.
Cherry said that she believed that this would lead to higher rates. The authority would have to pay off the loans acquired to buy the systems on top of the existing rates.
The money used to buy the water and sewer systems would go to the municipalities who owned them.
Council did not come off as that opposed to the plan if they could opt out of this portion. Council, however, felt it was a case of accepting the entire plan or none of it.
“We have a comprehensive plan that is so outdated you would need to hire somebody to do a plan,” said Redevelopment Authority Director Lance Marshall to provide the council the downside of rejecting the current plan.
According to Marshall hiring a consultant to do a comprehensive just for the City of DuBois would cost $30 to $40 thousand.