Sewer Fees to Be Investigated in Scotch Plains

Scotch Plains will hire a firm to investigate how the town bills residents and businesses for sewer fees. The $5,500 contract was awarded to a David Kaplan of DAK CPA at Tuesday's town council meeting.

"There was never a fair and scientific way of establishing these rates from the beginning," said Mayor Kevin Glover. "When [the sewer utility] first came about, people were supposed to be charged what they actually used. That never happened."  

Glover went on to describe how users were put into different "buckets" of fees.  The auditor will investigate how the town bills both residents and businesses and suggest alternatives. 

Councilman Bo Vastine took issue with how the contract was awarded so quickly to a specific firm.

"No one interviewed this company," said Vastine. "No one knows if there’s another company out there that provides the same service." 

Vastine called the move irresponsible without such due diligence and said the move was "all in the name of extending a campaign promise," referencing the fact that the mayor had campaigned last year on looking into putting the sewer fee back into the general budget instead of charging it separately. 

"This has nothing to do with a campaign promise," responded Glover, adding that it was the former township manager Henry Underhill who recommended the audit. "This is to make some sense out of the process – nothing more nothing less. Citizens deserve to know whether their sewer bills are in fact being rendered correctly and if they are being fairly distributed between residential and commercial users." 

Vastine voted no to the resolution awarding the contract along with Councilman Mickey Marcus, who suggested the town could use the professionals it has currently to take on the investigation in-house without using taxpayer money.

"That’s money we could have put toward the library," Marcus said.  

Glover responded to Marcus, saying, "Our folks didn’t think they could do it in house. This was our auditor telling us 'I can’t do it.' This is already coming from our professionals."