The Billerica Board of Selectmen are drawing heat from a group of resident of the Lakeside Mobile Home Court over long overdue rate hikes to the town’s water and sewer services. Lakeside is a 230-unit mobile home park that was set up with one meter for the entire complex. It is also the third largest consumer or town water and wastewater services.

Because individual meters were not installed, the bill for the park is charged at the higher rate and each resident is charged an equal share of the total. Alternate schemes for a billing system more acceptable to the residents of the park have been proposed, such as dividing the total bill by the number of residents and billing at a rate compatible for the average usage.

The average cost increase as things are now will amount to approximately $73.00 for sewer and $20.00 for water per year, or $7.75 per month.

The problem is that the owner of the property is responsible to pay all water and sewer fees in accordance with readings on the meter assigned to his property. Coincidently, the owner is $90,000.00 in arrears to the town for repaving Oak St after installing sewer to the facility.

The owner (and by extension, the tenants) has also benefitted from zoning relief that allows additional revenues (or decreased lot costs) to the trailer park community through a higher than normal density per acre.

It seems to me that with the zoning benefit, the non-payment of a $90,000.00 paving bill and the resulting ability to have sewer, something that people who pay much higher property and other taxes are waiting for, is benefit enough.

My proposal is that the residents pay the increase (which was long overdue and just the beginning of a program to get costs to balance with fees), or request an individual purchase and installation of meters through the town. There are other mobile home parks throughout the state. One is always free to apply and negotiate with any of these others should Billerica’s new fee schedule be too onerous to accept.

Consider this, when the owner of the trailer park property is forced to repay the $90,000.00 he owes to Billerica, he will distribute that fee among all tenants still residing in the park. Our town leaders failed to properly adjust sewer fees for decades and water fees in 4 years. All citizens are now paying for that oversight and will be paying more. As members of this community, you should be willing to pay your fair share as well.

It is unfortunate that you will also be hit with your share of the paving costs at the same time when you should have paying your share of the improvement to your chosen place of residence from the time the paving actually took place.

Some people say life sucks; others say life is a wonderful ride. I say that life just is – things happen, both good and bad; you deal with them and move on.

The one theme that runs through this entire post is this: several events went under the radar. Politicians and town officials were not paying attention and neither were the resident taxpayers. This neglect of duty and apathetic attitude toward understanding local politics and key events is precisely what led to abuses such as this.

You are what you eat and you get what you accept.