Belmont in court against campground owners

A dispute between the town’s Sewer Commission and the owners of a local campground has reached some resolution, but the main issue — about whether the campground’s owners are being asked to pay more than their fair share under the new rate system — is still up in the air and scheduled to go to trial today.

Ronald and Pamela Jaynes of 389 Jamestown Road the owners of the Silver Lake Campground, have had conflicts with the town ever since the Silver Lake Sewer Project began several years ago.

The couple first took the town to court after the Sewer Commission sought to take a small piece of the campground by eminent domain to complete the project. The Jaynes lost that fight, but the state Board of Tax and Land Appeals later ruled that the town did not recompense them properly. It paid the Jaynes about $10,500 for the land last year.

The trial set to begin at 9 a.m. today in the Belknap Superior Court concerns the service rate the Sewer Commission is asking the campground to pay. It is expected to last two days.

Andrew J. Piela of Nashua, who is representing the Jaynes, said that when the commission first announced the proposed rate structure for the Silver Lake Project, the Jaynes were concerned about how their property would be evaluated, partially because it is a seasonal operation.

“There are multiple parts of the bill,” Piela explained. “One is the assessment, which is the charge issued by the town to repay the cost of construction of this sewer line, and the second is called Operations and Maintenance, which is the charge the town bills you for the continual upkeep of the system. Well, the way the assessment is calculated is that there are about 160 users on this system, and every year the town has to pay something like $24,000 in (construction) debt. So what they’ve done is take the $24,000 and divided it by 160, so that everybody who is connected pays $150.”

The Jaynes don’t think their seasonal campsites should be rated the same way as a single-family home, the lawyer said.

“To the Jaynes’, that’s just not equitable,” he added. “Campsites put far less of a burden on the sewer system.”

In addition, the Jaynes have a letter written by town attorney Tim Bates several years ago that indicates that their assessments would be structured so that the Jaynes would pay less, according to Piela.

But attorney Phillip McLaughlin of Laconia, who is representing the Sewer Commission, said the Jaynes are actually being treated very fairly.

“Belmont’s rate is based on the recovery of indebtedness on its (construction) bond, and on its operational charges,” he said. “In some communities like Laconia, they also factor in a flowage charge. There’s a meter that measures the amount of fluid from each source, with the basic rule being that the same amount of water that flows in is the amount of effluence that comes out. But Belmont doesn’t have flowage as part of its rate structure. They’ve decided to pay that from some of their reserve accounts.”

Yesterday, the two sides were scheduled to meet at the court to talk about a Petition for Temporary and Permanent Injunction the Sewer Commission filed against the Jaynes in February.

The board complained that the couple was not fulfilling their legal obligation to connect to the new system, which was completed in October 2003.

Through their attorney, the Jaynes responded by claiming they had done part of the connection and was under no deadline to finish the work.

“(It’s) more complicated than a private home,” Piela wrote in court papers. The underground work can’t be done in the winter because the ground is frozen and the Jaynes didn’t want to do it during the camping season because it would drive away business.

In addition, the campground still had an “adequate alternative sewer disposal system, which complies with applicable state and local regulation… It’s functional and approved by the state of New Hampshire,” Piela wrote.

The Sewer Commission was suffering “no irreparable damage” by the current arrangement, he added.

Attorney McLaughlin said on Wednesday that the commission and the Jaynes’ had recently reached an agreement on the timing issue. The Jaynes indicated that about 30 of their 67 campsites are already connected to the town’s sewer system, and the rest should be completed by the end of this year, McLaughlin said. (A bathhouse on the property will be connected by May 2006.)