Mayors call for rejection of sewer budget

The mayors of Woodbridge, Clark and Rahway gathered this week to decry cost overruns at the Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority and called for the authority's commissioners to vote against any budget increases.

The three mayors also want to form a budget oversight committee to advise the authority, which raised rates for its member municipalities this year.

"Every level of government is cutting costs left and right and living within caps, but the authority doesn't have to," said Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac at a news conference Wednesday at Clark's municipal center. "That has to change."

The mayors said they will ask the sewerage authority's commissioners to postpone adoption of the yearly budget, which is scheduled for presentation on Nov. 5 and passage on Nov. 23, until after the proposed oversight committee can make recommendations.

The committee would consist of a mayor, administrator or chief financial officer from each of the 14 municipalities that are members of the authority, according to McCormac. The initial three members of the committee would be McCormac, Rahway business administrator Peter Pelissier and John Laezza, administrator of Clark. The mayors said the committee's recommendations would be non-binding, and they aren't seeking to change the bylaws of the authority to gain control of it.

The three mayors said they have the support of eight of the 14 communities served by the sewerage authority.

The authority's executive director, Michael Brinker, did not return calls for comment. The authority, a nonprofit agency that has processed sewage since 1928, raised its budget by more than 30 percent this year, from $19 million to more than $26 million, due in large part to debt payments for a new $250 million court-ordered facility, Commission Chairman Charles Lombardo said earlier this month.

In Rahway's case, this meant sewer fees went up from $2,510,356 to $3,275,088, according to Pelissier.

McCormac said the authority charges more than other sewer services used by the township.

"The problem is for us is about a third of our town's sewage goes to Rahway Valley Sewer, and it costs significantly more than the two-thirds that goes to Middlesex County Utilities Authority," said McCormac. "We need to do something about that."

James Kennedy, Rahway's mayor, criticized the sewerage authority's management of the court-ordered project, which he said increased from a cost of $70 million to more than $350 million. He said he was interested in the idea of privatizing the management of the facility.

Joan Papen, the authority's commissioner from Scotch Plains and a former mayor, said Wednesday that the news conference was held without notifying the commissioners or the authority's executive director.

"I don't think legally we could do something like that," Papen said, referring to the proposed oversight committee. She said any committees should be constituted of commissioners appointed by the municipalities.

After the mayors' announcement on Wednesday, Pelissier talked to Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy Malool about his prior experience serving as a commissioner for the authority.

The rising rates this year have had an enormous impact on Scotch Plains, Malool said, piquing her interest in how the authority is run.

"I believed this was something that was completely out of our control," Malool said of her past attitude toward the RVSA when she served on Scotch Plains council. "I started to say earlier this year, why can't they cut their costs?"

Eliot Caroom is a reporter with the New Jersey Local News Service. He may be reached at (908) 243-6215 or ecaroom@njlns.com.