Backbilling of Melrose Water Rates

For:   Melrose PatchFrom:  Arnold Koch   (781-662-7425)
Date: June 25, 2013
Subject:  Retroactive Water Billing  
Dear Editor, In 2005, the City of Melrose  established a retroactive billing system so that water and sewer bills beginning the new fiscal year, July 1, applied the new rates for the three previous months .  In October 2008,  the Melrose Taxpayers Alliance led by the late Susan Kelleher, and yours truly, with the support of Aldermen Conn and Medeiros, were successful in having the overbilling overturned. Water rates could only be billed as they applied to the actual fiscal year - not three months retroactively.

As Yoga Berra would say, under the  proposed water and sewer rates now before the Board of Aldermen, it is “deja vu all over again”.  In the new plan, the DPW has come back for another “bite of the apple” regarding billing water wills retroactively to April of the previously fiscal year.  As Alderman  Medeiros said at last Thursday’s hearing (held with little over one week’s notice - unless you saw the notice in City Hall)  it’s not fair to bill people for water they consumed in one fiscal year at a new fiscal rate. She said it  was like buying a gallon of milk, drinking it in June, and getting charged for it in July at a higher price.  In 2008, “The Municipal Advocate” a publication of the Mass. Municipal Association (of which Mayor Dolan is now a member) stated: “In searching for new sources of revenues, many local governments have begun to charge for delivery of services. Fees for services are limited,however, for they can be used only to offset the actual expense incurredby the municipality in delivering the service in that fiscal year. Trash fees,water and sewer bills and charges for sewer hook-ups fall within thiscategory.”      

Last Thursday, the Board announced that a final special meeting on the new rates will be held this Thursday,  June 27, with public participation at 7 p.m.