Ocean View officials are tying up the last few loose ends in the town’s water system project before the system is set to come online sometime in January.
Town Manager Conway Gregory reported at the town council’s Nov. 20 workshop that the town had already received a bill for $389,000 from Tidewater Utilities for the purchase of its Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCNs) for some of the properties to which the town will soon be providing water.
Gregory said the town has $395,000 remaining from U.S. Department of Agriculture loans that can go to pay for the CPCNs, but engineer Chuck Hauser of Davis, Bowen and Friedel was still set to review the CPCN for his own assessment of its value prior to the town paying Tidewater’s bill.
Gregory said Tidewater was pressing the town for a final list of properties to be supplied with water, so that it could finalize its own billing changes, but that the town wanted to finalize value of the CPCNs before proceeding.
Hauser is also in the final stages of making a recommendation to the town for water service rates that will determine exactly how much property owners and residents pay for their water service once it is turned on. Hauser will factor in the debt service on the USDA loan that paid for the system’s construction, as well as the ongoing costs of running the system.
The Ocean View Town Council should receive information on the system fees in the coming weeks, in time to vote them into place prior to January and system start-up. No definitive date for start-up has been provided as yet, but Gregory had previously targeted Jan. 1 as a date to have the system ready to go and fees in place.
Gregory noted the mailing of some 600 surveys to town property owners in recent weeks, as the town inquires about how many of them might qualify for Community Development Block Grants for water connection costs, from the state of Delaware through Sussex County government. As of Nov. 20, Gregory said, 296 had been returned, with a deadline of Dec. 10.
The surveys will be turned over to Sussex County officials, who will determine which of the residents are eligible for the grants. The council on Nov. 20 also formally approved and signed an application for the CDBG program.
In a last bit of water-related news, Gregory also reported that the town had completed installation of irrigation systems at town hall and was planning on installing irrigation at the new public safety building in the near future.
Purpose of council workshops discussed
A key element of the Nov. 20 council workshop was discussion among the council members of the purposes of such meetings. Mayor Gary Meredith reminded council members that the workshops are not required but nonetheless have been regularly scheduled in recent times.
“I’m not sure we need to hold them regularly,” Meredith said, pointing to a minimal agenda for that night’s meeting and suggesting the council hold workshops only when truly needed.
Councilman Bill Wichmann said he disagreed.
“The problem is that we’re not discussing the agenda items at the workshops. These things should come up first in a workshop,” Wichmann said, pointing to recent controversy over a raise given to Gregory inside of his first year of employment and suggesting not enough prior discussion had taken place.
Wichmann said he often receives information packets related to town council meetings on Friday afternoon, giving him little time to read and research before Tuesday-evening meetings. The workshops should help with that issue, he said, even if the council cannot take any action while in workshop session.
As another example, Wichmann said he was also unhappy with the town hall’s new phone system and hoped future discussion of that issue could take place during a workshop.
Meredith, however, said he felt the workshop had become, in essence, a second monthly council meeting.
Councilman Roy Thomas said he agreed that if there was nothing on the workshop agendas where the council had a pressing need for a vote, a meeting should not be held. But he said he also felt the council needed to discuss items more prior to taking votes. Some things, he said, could simply be postponed until the next council meeting.
“But we can’t stop doing the people’s business just because it’s not the first Tuesday of the month,” Thomas added.
Meredith said he would like the council to consider whether to hold its scheduled December workshop, and he advised council members that he and Gregory would be looking at future agenda requests from them for issues that might be held for a future workshop or regular council meeting instead of adding them together to create a low-priority workshop agenda.
Also on Nov. 20:
• Gregory announced that the town is now using the street address of town hall — 6 Oakwood Avenue — as its mailing address. It will no longer be using letterhead with the previous post office box number on it, though mail delivered to that post office box address will still be forwarded to the town hall mailbox for a period of six months.
• The council unanimously approved a holiday bonus for town employees.
• Finance Director Lee Brubaker reported that the town would meet the $50,000 budgeted this year for its new rental tax with payments received to date, even though six months of the fiscal year still remain.
The next due date for the rental tax is not until after the end of the current fiscal year, he noted, so much of those monies will not count toward meeting the budget target for this year.
Brubaker said a number of property management companies had paid in one large payment for all the properties they manage in the town, some of which were also paid for by their owners. He said refunds were being issued to those whose rental taxes had been overpaid as a result.
Gregory commended Code Enforcement Officer Charles McMullen for helping to ensure that the rental fees were coming in to the town.
• Wichmann encouraged the council to look into possibly paying off with existing liquid assets the loan the town took out for construction of the public safety building. He argued, as in the past, that the town is losing money paying interest on the loan instead of paying it off when the money is available. The annual interest payment, he said, is equivalent to 159 homes’ worth of average town property taxes, or about $80,000 per year.
Brubaker, who was not employed by the town when the loan was taken out, said the issue was one of weighing the interest paid on the loan versus that being collected due to having those liquid assets invested. The difference there is closer to $12,000 per year that the town pays in interest on the loan.
Thomas recommended the town’s Long Range Financial Planning Committee look at the comparison at their next meeting.