Todd Paris, Associate Editor and Salisbury Attorney
♦ No, I didn’t miss it. In January of this year city council voted to spend 7 million dollars from the Salisbury Rowan Utilities (SRU) enterprise fund to automate and computerize the city water meters. The ROI (Return on Investment) report forecast a modest increase in water fees and a long return on investment. That passed. Seems logical and a mark of good stewardship, right?
Over 1 million dollars per year is transferred from the SRU enterprise fund to the general fund to off-set “shared expenses.” That’s stuff like SRU using City H-R, vehicles, and stuff and it’s arguably legitimate, (it helps off-set the $3 Million per year Fibrant subsidy from the general fund.)
Here’s Salisbury’s staff’s real plan. The water fund spends 7M on automated and computerized meters. Who monitors them? Why Fibrant’s “shared” employees, of course! That accomplishes two goals: first it further cements Fibrant into the city infrastructure and makes it harder to get rid of, and secondly, a lot more money can now be justified to be moved from the water fund to the general fund to off-set the $3 million per year Fibrant loss as “shared expenses”. Remember Fibrant folks will be monitoring the meters from “the Hub.” The end result is the same, raiding the water fund again in a very sneaky manner, to prop up our failing broad-band.
Once again, those folks from the smaller municipalities will be propping up a broadband that they can not get and in Spencer’s case, in violation of a contract we signed with them when we took over their water and sewer system promising that water funds would be used just for water and sewer. Yeah right.
I hope I am wrong. Another thing – I predict that the water rate increase from the new computerized meters will be far, far greater than expected, probably closer to 25% to 50%. The Fibrant tax is coming. It’s just going to be camouflaged as a water increase caused by replacing outdated meters with new Fibrant monitored meters that can now “fairly and accurately measure actual water use”. It’s like a license to print money. Remember, you heard it here on RFP first!
