Fair fiscal policy

Fair fiscal policy
Sanitation District can cover its costs without resorting to backhoes

May 1, 2001

The story of a woman selling her wedding rings to finance restoration of her sewer service is a powerful one, as evidenced by letters to the editor from people who have only a vague idea of where Cortez might be.

Those writers believe that the Cortez Sanitation District should have used compassion instead of a backhoe and should have cooperated in working out a payment plan that would have allowed the family to retain their sewer service when a couple mistakes and a serious health problem combined to put their bill in arrears. Instead, the San District physically cut the sewer line, and the customer — whose overdue balance was less than $60, and whose husband had recently become disabled — was required to pay $500 to have service restored.

The Cortez Journal ran a story about an agency’s request for a refund of the $500, which the district board refused. When Denver Post columnist Diane Carman characterized Cortez as a place without pity, drawing regional attention to the problem, letters and contributions began to arrive.

Along with them came information and opinions, nearly all of them critical. In most cities, it seems, sanitation service is handled in one of two ways. When water and sewer service are combined under a single utility, cessation of water service can effectively eliminate the need for sewer service, without causing a serious health hazard. In other cities, a past-due sewer bill becomes a lien on the property, allowing the utility to collect without, again, causing a health hazard. In neither case are residents rendered unable to flush their toilets.

Public health is a significant consideration in the provision of sewer service, which is often provided by a municipal utility or, as in Cortez, by a separate taxing district. If uniform, sanitary disposal of liquid household waste was not beneficial to the public as well as to individual residents, city dwellers would still be allowed to use outhouses and septic tanks.

The Cortez Sanitation District charges residential customers $14 a month and bills, by postcard, once each quarter. Those infrequent postcards are easy to lose in the shuffle of junk mail. A month of treatment for the waste generated by one household does not cost $14; utilities must also generate funds for the repair and eventual replacement of their facilities, as well as for the indirect costs required to run the district regardless of the demands placed upon its services. Therefore, a month of compassion costs even less than $14. When there’s evidence that attempts are being made to correct the delinquency, sending out the heavy equipment seems to make very little sense.

Expecting customers to pay for the services they receive is only fair, and fair fiscal policy benefits all the constituents of the San District. But draconian measures to exact a pound of flesh along with a few pennies of income make Cortez appear to be a hostile place. The Cortez Sanitation District must be aware of the real costs of its policies, not all of which show up in monthly ledger entries. Directors elected from among the district’s constituency need to be reminded of that reality.