Rick Alpers had the votes and his ideas carried the day

To The Daily Sun,

Bristol is moving forward as many asked for. Welcome to the new Bristol, we now have more employees, more equipment, more sewer lines and a higher general fund operating budget. There are so many ways they are taxing us it is hard to keep track of them and exactly how much it will cost us. I must hand it to Selectboard Chair Rick Alpers, he came to Town Meeting with lots of ammo and votes and won, kudos to him.

This is the cost of the sewer impact to you. If you pay property taxes, you will automatically pay an additional .85 cents per thousand or $170 a year for 30 years on a property worth $200,000. If the sewer line runs past your property you will pay an additional $610 per year for 30 years, this is your betterment fee (your property is already worth more). If you connect to the new sewer line, you will pay about $350 per year, this is your user fee. Next, all current sewer users and new users will pay an additional $150 per year, this is an extra user fee/taxation.

Lastly, for those lucky enough to connect, it was said at Town Meeting you will pay between $7,000 to $10,000 just for the pump (each property must have a pump to grind and push the sewerage to the street), plus the cost of running the pipe from the street to your house and electricity for the pump and you will also have the burden of maintaining all this too. I figure another $3,000 for this work (estimated). They also estimated about 500 new connections.

Summary of the above:

— Property owner taxation with no sewer hook-up or line running by property = $170

— Property owner taxation for people who already have sewer lines, additional annual cost, $170+$150 = $320.

— Property owner taxation with new sewer line but do not hook-up, annual cost, $170+$610 = $780.

— New property sewer line annual cost that must hook-up, $170+$610+$350+$150+electricity = $1,280.

— One-time excavation cost to hook-up = $10,000 to $13,000

Rick Alpers and team won the day and they won it by one vote. One more vote against the sewer project and it would have failed. Only good thing Rick Alpers said at Town Meeting is if they cannot get $10 million in grant money they would not go forward with the project.

Lastly, at Town Meeting last Saturday, every article passed but one. The only article that did not pass was purposely passed over by Alpers. He purposely ignored the 25 voters who wanted this petition warrant article heard. This article was to make sure the town used ALL $250,000 for paving, where in past years Alpers and team used between $50,000 and $100,000 of paving money on other expenses and not paving roads. This is the worst financial decision I have ever seen.

John Sellers

Bristol