SIDNEY – Sidney Town Council discussed raising the town’s sewer rates at their meeting Friday.
Turkey Creek Regional Sewer District Superintendent Tim Woodward gave a presentation to the Council at the beginning of the meeting on the state of the sewer plant, including the fact the plant was 14 years old and several parts had been replaced.
Council President Sharon Rancourt said the town is required to make a profit from the sewer utility in order to maintain it. The issue isn’t going away, the Council can’t ignore it, she said.
While there are 78 hookups in town, Rancourt said there are some vacant houses and some residents who don’t pay their bills. Rancourt said there are several residents that have sewer bills that are “astronomical” and the town has tried everything, including putting liens on them, to no avail. Rancourt said the town has started small claims lawsuits against some of those residents.
Some residents are also aging out and people aren’t moving in to Sidney, she said.
“So, as a result, one of the things we need to talk about is increasing our sewer rate. And the preference would be to do it incrementally over the course over the next few years,” she said.
The purpose of incrementally increasing the rate would to make sure the rate increase isn’t a big jump.
Rancourt said the Council is looking at a 3.5% increase in sewer bills, from $73 to $75.56 a month.
Councilman Gavin Parrett asked where the percentage of 3.5% came from. Rancourt said she divided the last sewer increase by half and that’s where the 3.5% increase came from. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 3.5%, the rate could be 2%, but she thought the town could just start somewhere.
There was no vote on the rate increase Friday.
Rancourt said she will bring information to the next Council meeting so people can look at it.
The Council is looking to make the increase effective in April, Rancourt said.
The Council discussed possibly voting on the increase in March.
In other business, the Council talked about getting Keystone software for the town.
“Keystone is the preferred method of software the State Board of Accounts and (the Department of Local Government Finance) want towns to use,” Rancourt said.
She said she believed Sidney is one of two towns in the state that still has a handwritten ledger.
The entire package would cost about $10,000, Rancourt said.
The Council recently applied for a grant to buy the software. Rancourt said Kosciusko County Foundation sent an award letter to the town saying Sidney was approved for the grant for $7,900. The town is going to submit a 20% match to that, so that will allow the town to purchase the entire package and updates that SBOA and DLGF is going to require for 2021 and 2022.
“So, thank you very much to them,” Rancourt said. “We can’t express enough appreciation. It’s really going to help this small town out a lot.”
In other business, the Council:
• Approved to hire SiteWorx to plow for the town when there’s 4 inches of snow or more.
• Approved another year of membership with Advance Indiana Municipality.
• Decided the next Council meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Jackson Township Fire Station.
