Hold on to your wallet - here comes Levy-son

Again, your comment about EOWC is not based on fact - you should go back and ask Board members and staff their opinion.

First, the Sewer and Water are fees not taxes.  I have discussed in conversations at our "coffees" the reason/justification for these fee changes. I think you are reaching. 

Again, ask your colleagues who were on the Board with you who as well supported and voted for John's contract. You may have disagreed with it but were in the minority and you should also remember closed session discussions on the management of that contract.  

How come our sewer fees are so high compared to other towns? I know we added on , one time for the litigation costs for water clean up, but that extra fee stayed on. Why is it so much cheaper in other in other towns? 

ace11 said:

How come our sewer fees are so high compared to other towns? I know we added on , one time for the litigation costs for water clean up, but that extra fee stayed on. Why is it so much cheaper in other in other towns? 

We recently sold a house in Monmouth Co. Our sewerage fees were $312/yr.  

eta - Maplewood's sewerage fee is $175. This year (2015) the fee is being increased by $11 due to an assessment by the Joint meeting of Essex and Union counties. 

http://villagegreennj.com/towns/government/maplewood-sewer-fees-likely-increase-2015/  

Several year ago, the South Orange sewerage fee was raised in order to collect more revenue from Seton Hall, which doesn't pay any taxes on its properties on the main campus. 

Maplewood is much cheaper, I don't know how the fees are calculated out of county, was trying to compare apples to apples.

Howard is trying awfully hard to make a sow's ear into a silk purse.  More importantly, where are the comments from his two running mates for the BOT.  As always Deborah Davis Ford and Mark Rosner have been notable by their silence.  Could it be that they know they are guilty of incompetence or worse?

levisonhw said:

First, the Sewer and Water are fees not taxes.  

 Come on Fees/Taxes what's the difference, the populace still has to pay the bill. Who cares what you call it. This is just a way to get around the tax caps.

cramer said:

Several year ago, the South Orange sewerage fee was raised in order to collect more revenue from Seton Hall, which doesn't pay any taxes on its properties on the main campus. 

 That's what I thought.

nohero said:

I thought South Orange had "goosed" the sewer charge in order to collect money from Seton Hall (which is exempt from property taxes).  The overage would be going into the general Village coffers.

Scott: Cramer is correct in reference to SHU.

Cramer: Some years ago we tried to structure the fee based on water consumption but the EOWC system was not capable without a major modification.  This may be possible when we switch.

Ok, got it. Everyone in town  pays more so you can get some money out of SHU,  that seams fair! There isnt another way to go about this? Where does the extra money thats collected go? 

It offsets most of the sewer expenses other than Joint Meeting charges.

levisonhw said:

Again, your comment about EOWC is not based on fact - you should go back and ask Board members and staff their opinion.

 I have and the ones I asked remember it the same way that I do.

levisonhw said:

Again, ask your colleagues who were on the Board with you who as well supported and voted for John's contract. You may have disagreed with it but were in the minority and you should also remember closed session discussions on the management of that contract.  

The 3 of us who voted against the no-show contract made our concerns known in public, as did you make your reasons known publicly for supporting it. 

levisonhw said:

It offsets most of the sewer expenses other than Joint Meeting charges.

That dosent seem right. If you charge , above and beyond the regular sewer charge there should be extra money. In addition you collect extra money from SHU and it only covers the costs? Then I'll revert to my original question, how come our charges are so much more then maplewood? We use the same sewage plant right? So the fees should be about the same? Where exactly does the money go? 

cramer said:

West Orange is a flat fee of $250/yr. 
http://nj-westorange.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/905  

Livingston's sewerage fee is tied to water usage.  I couldn't find anything online about how much Milburn's sewerage charges are. 

 For 2015 we paid Milburn $156 for sewer fee.

ace11 said:

levisonhw said:

It offsets most of the sewer expenses other than Joint Meeting charges.

That dosent seem right. If you charge , above and beyond the regular sewer charge there should be extra money. In addition you collect extra money from SHU and it only covers the costs? Then I'll revert to my original question, how come our charges are so much more then maplewood? We use the same sewage plant right? So the fees should be about the same? Where exactly does the money go?  

Maplewood's sewerage fee is  $186 in 2015. Millburn's is $156. West Orange paid $250 in 2013. I don't know much the  West Orang fee is in 2015. The average of the three is $197. 

The 2015 South Orange fee will be $280. South Orange residents pay $83 more than the average of the three towns. I don't know what percentage of the additional amount is paid by SHU. My understanding is that difference goes into SO coffers so as to reduce the taxes of residents that they would otherwise have to pay, barring any reductions in municipal services. It seems that the way to analyze this is to assume that municipal services remain the same, and determine how much municipal services would have to be reduced if the $83 difference weren't there. Then you get into the question of what municipal services would have to be cut to maintain the same tax increase. 

Or get SHU to make a PILOT for its main campus, which gets into the issue that has been debated on MOL for as long as I've been following it.  

eta - I'm not thrilled with SO taxes, to put it mildly. If paying an additional $83/yr in sewerage charges saves me more than that in taxes, I can accept it. Howard mentioned above that basing sewerage charges on water usage might be possible when we make the switch to NJAW on Jan. 1, 2017. 

So Cramer, if your understanding is that we are paying more for Sewer than the actual bill so ovreages go back to SO to essentially lower the tax bill, doesn't that in fact make the portion over the actual a TAX and not a FEE.

Howard please clarify that for us.

scott - Let's call the $83 a tax. That would have been 0.01 percent of the 2014 municipal taxes. If it saves me more than $83 in municipal taxes, I can't get too excited about it. The tax benefit for taxpayers in the 30% bracket is $25, which probably doesn't make any difference because of AMT. 

scottgreenstone said:

So Cramer, if your understanding is that we are paying more for Sewer than the actual bill so ovreages go back to SO to essentially lower the tax bill, doesn't that in fact make the portion over the actual a TAX and not a FEE.

Howard please clarify that for us.

 I live south of the South Orange border, and even I had heard of that.  It's kind of silly to claim it's anyone's "understanding", since it's something your governing body voted to approve.

And of course it's a fee, since then you can charge Seton Hall that fee.  Don't know why you have to pick one member of your governing body to "clarify", when it's kind of obvious.

As I said, I'm not in South Orange.  But, that doesn't make what I wrote inaccurate.

This sounds a bit like fraud

scottgreenstone said:

levisonhw said:

First, the Sewer and Water are fees not taxes.  

 Come on Fees/Taxes what's the difference, the populace still has to pay the bill. Who cares what you call it. This is just a way to get around the tax caps.

The tax/fee shell game politicians love to play.

Minimize tax increases by raising fees.

Christie, who doesn't want to raise the gas or any other tax played that well. Instead he raised tolls and transit fares.

Howard - The 2014 budget anticipated $2,275,000 in user fees. It anticipated costs of $971,567 for Joint Trunk Sewer Maintenance and $35,695 for Joint Meeting Millburn Crossing Assessment, for a total of $1,007,263. The difference between revenues and costs is $1,007,262.  What else goes into calculating costs, or is the $1,000,000 really the excess amount of sewer fees paid?  

I had used a calculation of the average fees paid in Maplewood, Millburn and West Orange compared to the SO user fee and came up with a difference of $83. $83 is 29.6% of the $280 fee, and 29.6% of the total user fees in 2014 would have been $673,000, which isn't really that much off. 

Do these numbers reflect the actual situation?  What percentage of the total user fees are paid by SHU? Am I missing something? 

Thanks.  

eta -My understanding is that if these numbers are anywhere near correct, there would have to be significant budget cuts or significant budget increases in order to maintain the same level of services, and the excess amount results in SHU paying more, which would otherwise result in SO taxpayers paying more than $83 or slightly more in order to maintain the same level of services. Is it possible to present some numbers to show how this works?  This really seems almost identical to the questions that had been raised about PILOTs, which were answered by use of a spreadsheet. 

Another eta - Going back to 2009 and 2010, the sewer user fees in the budget were $1,951,000. Actual user fees were $2,058,303 in 2012 and $2,275,000 in 2013. 

scottgreenstone said:

levisonhw said:

First, the Sewer and Water are fees not taxes.  

 Come on Fees/Taxes what's the difference, the populace still has to pay the bill. Who cares what you call it. This is just a way to get around the tax caps.

Taxes are deductible on your federal return.  Fees are not.  The difference is that fees can be levied on tax exempt properties, and fees can be flat, so they are not variable based on tax assessment value.  Generally, low assessed properties and tax exempt properties benefit from taxes and high assessed properties benefit from fees.

Rob_Sandow said:

scottgreenstone said:

levisonhw said:

First, the Sewer and Water are fees not taxes.  

 Come on Fees/Taxes what's the difference, the populace still has to pay the bill. Who cares what you call it. This is just a way to get around the tax caps.

Taxes are deductible on your federal return.  Fees are not.  The difference is that fees can be levied on tax exempt properties, and fees can be flat, so they are not variable based on tax assessment value.  Generally, low assessed properties and tax exempt properties benefit from taxes and high assessed properties benefit from fees.

Rob - Has  there been any discussion of the sewer fee by the CBAC? 

8% increase to the Sewer Fee (to $280) is on the agenda for Monday's BOT Meeting.

http://southorange.no-ip.org/WebLink8/DocView.aspx?id=136896&dbid=0

This equates to a 70% increase in the sewer fee since Levison and Davis Ford took office 8 years ago.

I don't think we had sewers when Rosner took office  

Michael, after all this time you couldn't change the thread title?  When you were serving would you have thought it clever if people called you Michael Golddigger?  I suspect you would have thought it rude.

Nice one Jeff!! 

Jeff - I don't think the thread titles can be updated on the new Board.

Although, I suspect more people are concerned about what is being done to their sewer bills than a thread title.

This fee (tax) is the gutless wonders' on the BOT effort to stick it to Seton Hall.  Since the gutless wonders on the BOT, especially Howard Levison and Professor Torpey, do not have the physical equipment to lay it on the line to Seton Hall that it is time for that institution to pay up, they go to the back door and stick it to all homeowners.  They can not show any data to justify this miserable action, but in their perverted minds that is irrelevant.  I challenge, Levison, Davis Ford and Rosner to justify this increase.