July Woodsboro News-Briefs

(7/2024) Council Approves Property Tax And Water & Sewer Rate Increase

At its June meeting, the Town Council approved the Town’s FY-25 budget which included a 27% increase in the town’s property tax and a 25% increase in the town’s water and sewer rates.

As a result of the new property tax rate, the town will see its property tax revenue increase form $174,147 to $266,000, which represents the majority of the revenue increase expected by the town in FY-25. Other additional revenue sources include: $200K in the states ‘piggy back’ income tax; $93K in highway users fees; and $135K in Frederick County tax sharing.

The town’s expenses are projected to increase from $637K to $733K in FY-25. The principal driver of the increase is the expected cost of starting construction of the new town hall, which is budgeted for $150K. Principle expenses in FY-25 are: $123K for staff salaries; $105K for street maintenance, $88K for the maintenance of the Town’s parks; $84K for trash collection; and $37K for insurance.

Water and sewer revenues are expected to increase from $510K to $619K as a result of the approved water & sewer rate increase. $429K of the projected revenue comes from usage fees. The town makes additional revenue of $46K from just renting the water tower to the cell phone companies – which represents close to 80% of the expected mortgage for the new town hall.

Principle costs for operating the water & sewer system include: $120K for routine repair and maintenance; $107k for electricity; $75K for contract support staff; $87K for supplies; and $38K for sludge removal.

Hazardous Waste Cylinder To Be Removed

The Town Council agreed to pay a hazardous waste removal company $78,000 to remove six old cylinders that contain hazardous chemicals once used by the town’s old waste water treatment facility.

Over the past few months, two of the cylinders that contained chlorine gas have leaked, resulting in the need to evacuate town staff located at the wastewater treatment facility and residents on Cornell Drive living adjacent to the plant.

According to Burgess Heath Barnes, "the cylinders contain hazardous chemicals once used by the town’s old wastewater treatment facility and should have been removed when the old facility was demolished, but for some reason they never were.

"The cylinders," Barnes said, "had been stored in an old shed, and while they were out of the elements, they were ok. But the shed had to be torn down four years ago because it had become unstable, and since then, the cylinders had begun to rust."

Three of the six cylinders contained chlorine gas, the nature of the chemicals in the remaining three cylinders was not revealed.

Following the most recent releases of chlorine, the Town reached out to contractors specializing in hazardous waste removal. While the size of the single bid did surprise Council members, Commissioner Bill Rittelmeyer said that ‘dithering’ on the issue was not an option, and that given the limited number of companies involved in hazardous waste removal, the Town should proceed with approving the bid and finally addressing the issue. Rittlemeyer’s fellow Council members agreed and voted 4 to 0 to approve spending the money to remove the cylinders.

Town Fined For Exceeding Waste Water Discharge Limits

Maryland’s Department of the Environment (MDE) has fined the town $27,000 for exceeding the e-coli limits in wastewater discharged to Israel Creek over a three-year time period starting in 2020 and ending in 2023.

Barnes told the council, the fine was not for exceeding the limits per-se, but for a paperwork error involved in the reporting of the discharges.

"Our contractor who is responsible for sampling the wastewater discharge for the sewer plant and verifying it is within the specification of our permits, was in fact documenting each instance of where we exceed the limits, but unfortunately, he was documenting them in the wrong section of the on-line form on MDE’s website. He wasn’t hiding the fact, he just put the number in the wrong box. This is how MDE discovered the violations."

Barnes told the council that the violations were a result of the decreased capacity of the filters used at the treatment plant to capture the bacteria and the ‘blue light’ irradiation system used to kill what bacteria the filters fail to stop.

"We knew we had an issue with this for years, which is why we spent over $650,000 of the COVID-19 ARAP money we received on replacing the failing filters and blue light system."

Barnes pointed to the fact that the last violation cited by the State was in early 2023, just before the systems were replaced. "Since they were replaced, we’ve not had another violation," he said.

The state had offered to allow the town to pay $27,000 over three years, but Barnes said they were open to negotiating the final amount of the fine. Commissioner Cutshall suggested that Barnes enter negations with the state by offering a single lump sum payment of $15,000 to close the case.

The Council authorized Banes to enter negations with the state, and if unsuccessful, agreed to allow him to pay the $27,000 fine.