OUR VIEW: A better way for the town to slice up its coveted pie

» The town of Culpeper is right to explore changing its policy on the reservation of water and sewer tap connections.

Think of the town of Culpeper’s water and sewer system like a big pie. Now think of builders as hungry guests at a dinner table who each want a slice of that pie.

There’s only so much pie to go around, and that was evident during the recent housing boom, as the town promised away so many pieces of pie (water and sewer tap connections) that it seemed to be running out of food.

Problem was, when the bubble burst and construction dried up, so did the need for all of those tap connections. The town still had a bunch of pie, so to speak, but its faulty policy had allowed for builders to indefinitely reserve (for free) too many coveted water and sewer hookups — often to the detriment of other businesses, including the county, that needed service right away.

By July 2007, the problem had gotten so far out of hand that the town was turning away customers and had to embark on a $27 million expansion to its sewer treatment plant.

Thankfully, times have changed. The building frenzy has slowed, Culpeper has a new town manager and better relations seem to be on the horizon between the town and county. But when it comes to the town’s policy for parsing out water and sewer tap connections, the crux of the problem remains.

“We have this list of projects that may or may not happen,” Councilman Chip Coleman said. “To reserve all this capacity for some list that hasn’t put up any money doesn’t make an sense to me.”
It doesn’t make sense to us either. And we’re not the only ones.

Thankfully, the town’s Water and Sewer Committee revisited the reservation policy last week, and the full Town Council will discuss fixing the process at its meeting July 14.

We won’t get into all the details here, but you can read them in the July 2 edition of the Star-Exponent or go to StarExponent.com, site word: tap fees. Suffice to say, the town is heading in the right direction in regard to how it slices up all that yummy pie.