THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 17, 1996 TAG: 9610170330
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KATRICE FRANKLIN AND TERRI WILLIAMS, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 60 lines
The City Council delayed voting on raising water and sewer hook-up costs Wednesday so it can hold another public hearing in two weeks.
During a hearing Wednesday, more than 30 residents pleaded with the council not to raise the connection rates.
``We're suffering,'' Troy Boone said. ``Now it's (utilities) almost coming to us but with double the price. That doesn't sound reasonable. . . . It's going to be real tough on us.''
For more than a year, the city has been trying to come up with a plan to install water and sewer lines to areas primed for residential growth while extending the same basic services to residents who have been without them for years.
City officials say the new utility rates, which would take effect July 1, 1997, are necessary to offset the cost of growth.
Currently, a single-family homeowner connecting to the city's water system pays a $710 connection fee and a $1,750 water resource recovery fee. Connections for sewerage cost $800 if they are made within 90 days of a main's being extended and $1,500 afterward.
With the new policy, the connection fee for water would be $800, and the recovery fee would be replaced with an ``availability'' charge of $3,500. All sewer connections would cost $1,050, and the availability charge would be $1,700.
The availability charge would pay for any new demands such as expanding the city's water supply.
The city has put in a provision to allow residents whose homes are part of city efforts to extend services to older neighborhoods to pay existing hook-up rates.
These projects - Nansemond South, Palmyra, Milteer Acres, Cedar Lake/Lake Forest and Holland Heights - are capital improvement projects earmarked for the next two years. Many residents who protested the fee increase Wednesday are from these neighborhoods.
City Manager Myles E. Standish said city staff will hold several informational meetings with residents before the next public hearing.
In other business, the council unanimously approved paying the Chesapeake engineering firm of Horton and Dodd and the Virginia Beach surveying firm of Rouse-Sirine Associates Ltd. $50,000 to survey the boundary between Chesapeake and Suffolk.
The surveyor would study land between Chesapeake and Suffolk from Portsmouth to the North Carolina state line. The area most in question is in and around Pughsville, a community near Interstate 664 where officials in both cities have had trouble assessing taxes and providing services.
The problem surfaced last year when builders questioned Chesapeake officials about the exact boundary lines. City officials there began issuing permits, but most builders didn't want to begin work without being certain which city their property was in.
Also, during council's work session earlier on Wednesday, the council studied its legislative wish list for the 1997 General Assembly.
Councilwoman Marian ``Bea'' Rogers proposed letting Suffolk hold referendums on new school construction. Rogers said referendums are needed because such future costs could mean higher taxes. by CNB