HdG Water and Sewer Fund Continues to Drain City Finances

The Havre de Grace Water and Sewer Commission presented its annual report to the City Council recently, and the picture is consistent with the previous couple of years in that the city continues to lose money from the water and sewer fund.

See the State of the Water/Sewer System report here.

This year’s water/sewer fund deficit is $805,689, according to the report, which covers the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014.

The commission attributed the monetary loss to a lack of new users and vacant properties. The fund gets its support from residential/business connections to the water and sewer service and from new development.

In its report, the commission offered eight recommendations for how to recoup money, such as reducing operational costs at the water treatment plant; increasing the cost of hauling sludge; creating a service charge for fire protection; establishing a debt service generating $500,000 a year; and reevaluating the capital cost recovery system in which builders pay a certain amount of money up front for the fund.

Overall, the city of Havre de Grace ended the fiscal year with a $1.89 million deficit, The Aegis reported, with the water and sewer fund the largest contributor to its position in the red. The $400,000 commitment to purchase property on Water Street property; a $236,000 loss from government activities; and a more than $200,000 loss in dockage fees also contributed, the newspaper reported.

The mayor said last month that he was curbing spending given the climate. “...I am restricting spending until I am comfortable that new residential connections are at levels anticipated by the Water & Sewer Fund budget,” Mayor Wayne Dougherty said in a January letter to the city council and citizens of Havre de Grace. “I remain optimistic that ongoing efforts, by both the administration and the council, to promote development will ultimately prove successful. I will continue to spend cautiously until those efforts bear fruit.”

Related: Mayor Sets 4-Year Plan to Solve Water and Sewer Fund