JEFFERSON —
Brian Diehl, the chairman of the county’s Economic Development Steering Committee, wants the commissioners to give their immediate attention to the issue of unreasonable sewer tap-in and reuse fees that discourage entrepreneurs from investing in the county.
Commissioner Peggy Carlo attended the committee’s meeting on Monday, a session that focused entirely upon last week’s Star Beacon story about Austinburg Township restaurant owners hit with a huge reuse fee as a result of expanding their business. The owners, Nicholas and Giovanna Kustala, own the Estate at Coffee Creek. They plan to open a new upscale restaurant in a former auction house behind their 1840 home, which is served by the Coffee Creek Industrial Park treatment plant.
The former owner of the property tapped into the county-owned treatment plant in the 1980s and paid the tap-in fee, which was set by his use of the property at that time. Nicholas Kustala said it was never explained to him that he would have to pay an additional fee if the use changed. When he announced his plans to open the restaurant, the county’s Department of Environmental Services sent Kustala a letter advising him of the fee.
Diehl told Carlo that, as a economic development group, the front-page story “is not the image we want to portray” to business. He said his personal reaction was to fix the problem immediately.
Carlo said the commissioners are looking at options butdon’t want to apply a fix to one situation that could open the door to many more problems and possible litigation from others who already are tapped into the system.
The tap-in and reuse fees are used to pay back the state loan that the county obtained to purchase and install the plant, Carlo said. She said this “front-loading” of the fees is the approach the prior commissioners took when it set up the agreement with Austinburg Township. Many of the commercial users along the Route 45 corridor, including the hotels and restaurants, paid fees several times greater than what Kustalas are being asked to pay in order to access the treatment plant.
“It was a different time,” Carlo said of the economic environment that existed when the plan was implemented. “Now, it is a completely different time.”
Commissioners have a number of options at their disposal, such as adding the fee to the Kustalas’ tax bill, which would spread out the capital cost over several years. Carlo said every option is “a double-edged ax” that will affect other system users. Further, as a result of entering into a regional sewer agreement with the city of Ashtabula, the county is restrained on how it assesses tap-in fees elsewhere in the county.
The amount of the fee is determined using a complex formula that predicts a business’ sewerage flow rate. In the Kustalas’ case, Carlo said the reuse fee was estimated at $26,800, not $50,000 as reported last week but still a significant burden for a business whose margins are thin.
The problem is not isolated to Coffee Creek. Steering committee members said Ashtabula’s tap-in fee was one of the issues that pushed ESAB Welding Products to South Carolina. James Timonere, executive director of the Ashtabula Area Chamber of Commerce, agreed the fees discourage investment and growth.
“The city has been looking at it for years. It is a complicated issue … ,” he said.
Commissioner Daniel Claypool said he believes there is room for flexibility. Geneva, for example, discounts its fees to encourage economic development.
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