Brown County Regional Sewer District residents will have to wait a little longer to know whether the district and Town of Nashville will work together on sewage treatment, or whether the district will seek to build its own plant.
The Brown County Regional Sewer District and the Nashville Town Council have not yet reached agreement over conditions for Nashville to treat sewage from the area around Bean Blossom, but both parties are continuing to discuss options.
The district is responsible for all of Brown County that’s not already served by a sewer district or Nashville.
Right now, the district board is focused on its first sewer project to serve the Bean Blossom area and part of Freeman Ridge Road.
The sewer district board is reviewing a contract for treatment that Evan Werling, the president of the district, received at the town council meeting Dec. 1.
The board will not act on it before its next meeting Tuesday, Jan. 3.
The district board had sought a wholesale rate from the town, trying to decide what the best option would be to treat sewage from the current Bean Blossom project.
The contract was prepared in response to a letter the sewer board sent to the town with a request that the council sign it, said Scott Rudd, town manager/economic development director.
At the Dec. 6 meeting of the sewer district, Werling said the contract was not the response he had anticipated.
“We got this huge, massive, eight-page contract with exhibits,” he said. “Not only was it approved by the town, it was also signed and notarized, waiting for my signature — a contract that we’ve never seen before.”
Werling said he was not going to go through the contract at the Dec. 6 meeting.
“There are things in there that, if we discussed them, there’d be some pretty angry people in the room. I can tell you, those things are not going to fly,” he said.
Rudd said that while the town had hoped the document would be satisfactory to the district as it stood, the only reason for having it signed and ready for the district to act on was in order to respect the request from the district board to act in a timely manner.
During the sewer board’s December meeting, Werling said that the district needed a cost for treatment per 1,000 gallons, a hookup fee, and a guarantee the town would provide service to the district for 40 years.
At the Nov. 17 town council meeting, he had requested the town respond before Nov. 29 so that the district would not miss out on financing, thus delaying the project.
What’s in it
The contract did include things Werling said the sewer board needed, such as an agreement to provide service for 40 years, a treatment rate per 1,000 gallons and the responsibilities of the district regarding costs of attaching to the Nashville system.
After the meeting, Werling said he was not able to discuss what other portions of the contract he might have objections to until the district’s legal council has reviewed it.
The proposed contract also requests that the town have a seat on the regional sewer district board.
In addition, under the contract, anyone connecting to the district’s system within three miles of Nashville would have to sign away the ability to protest future annexation by the town.
Those “waivers of remonstrance” against annexation are tied to the property, not the owner, and would also waive the ability of any future owner to resist annexation.
The entire area surrounding Nashville is currently in the Brown County Regional Sewer District’s jurisdiction, including the three-mile buffer zone the town requested.
Requirements for annexation waivers and board representation in such contracts are not uncommon, said Vicki Perry, state director of the Rural Community Assistance Program.
Rudd said that the seat on the board does not have to be a voting member; that person could be an advisory member.
The sewer board already has an “executive advisory committee” which includes such people as the president of the Brown County Board of Health and the county highway superintendent.
The town’s only desire for a seat is to maintain a line of communication and provide input into the board’s future decisions, Rudd said.
Annexation?
Nashville Town Council President “Buzz” King said that the waivers of remonstrance against annexation are a document that they have all town utility customers outside of the town’s limits sign.
The town would be open to negotiating a range under three miles, he said.
On the north end of town, a three-mile buffer would reach the overlook on State Road 135 North.
Ultimately, it is not in the town’s best interest to annex if it doesn’t have to, King said. While the town receives property tax income from an annexation, at best, that income meets the cost of providing additional services such as snow removal, policing and paving.
He said he believes many people may also misunderstand and think that the county loses revenue from land annexed by the town.
It doesn’t, he said. All town residents pay county property taxes as well, which is why their taxes are higher once the town’s property taxes are added on.
The only time the town will consider annexation is if it’s requested, King said. He gave a hypothetical example of a new development near town that needs services only the town can provide to that area. Without annexation, something such as a new apartment complex may not be economically feasible, he said.
The waivers come into play if that request is from someone whose land is near town, but doesn’t touch it.
While the town was able to annex properties in the past that did not touch Nashville, that is no longer legal, King said.
Now, any property annexed must either touch the town or be part of a block of properties that touch town, he said.
The waivers — which are attached to the deed and transfer with ownership — allow the town to annex such a block of properties to reach another property, even if one of the affected property owners does not want annexation at that time, King said.
“The Town of Nashville is not aggressively seeking more land for Nashville. We don’t need more land for Nashville,” he said. “Brown County is what we’re mostly interested in. We want to help and we want to protect and we want to encourage people to live comfortably in Brown County.”
Much of what the town put into the contract comes down to making certain the current council does not tie the hands of a future council, King said.
While they would be able to adjust rates to reflect increases in their own costs, whatever the town and sewer district agree to, they will both be bound to for at least 40 years.
Alternatives
If the town and district cannot reach an agreement for treatment, the only other action the district could take would be to build its own wastewater treatment plant. That option has been explored in the engineering report that Gary Ladd of Ladd Engineering Associates prepared.
However, both Rudd and Werling expressed a preference for working together.
Werling told the council Nov. 17 that he did not think having multiple treatment plants around the county would be good for the county as a whole. He said that this is also an opportunity for the county and town to work together, rather than duplicating efforts.
The town wants to see this project work and for the district and town to be able to reach an agreement they can both live with, Rudd said.
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