Hartford Fiscal Trouble Slams Into West Hartford Over Water Bills

If the City of Hartford cant pay a more than $5 million balance for its Metropolitcan District (MDC) water and sewer bill, then the member towns will have to cover the loss.

No town will receive a higher bill for the services than West Hartford at $1.7 million.

The rates are set in place and the figure is based on the town's rates and usage.

“This is going to make us spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the right number is for our community," said Ron Van Winkle, West Hartford's longtime town manager.

Hartford has been dealing with historic financial woes and faces budget shortfalls approaching $20 million and $50 million for the next two fiscal years.

The city has informed the MDC that it may not be able to fulfill its obligations, triggering the MDC charter which states that the other member towns would make up for the loss.

Scott Jellison, the CEO of the MDC, said the execution of that section of the charter is a rare move.

"I don't think anyone would have expected this to happen to our capital city but it has and as a regional body we're here to support each member" Jellison said. "It's on the other seven towns interest Hartford succeeds and with out Hartford succeeding all their ad valorem payments would go up forever."

The towns would only have to chip in to cover Hartford if the city doesn't make all of its MDC payments, totalling $5.8 million by October 2017. The issue for cities and towns within MDC is that they are all responsible for the balance, and their budgets on a different cycle than MDC, meaning they would all have to set aside money for the worst-case-scenario.

East Hartford would ow $968,000, Newington $719,000, Bloomfield $586,000, Rocky Hill $474,000, Wethersfield $652,000, Windsor $700,000 and finally West Hartford's $1.7 million

Van Winkle says his first inclination is to use excess tax revenues to pay for the town's potential balance to MDC. He fears that using money sitting in the town's reserves could come back to hurt the town if it wants to borrow money for investment in the future.

“With the city, and the problems in our Capital City, West Hartford is going to be affected in a lot of different ways, whether it’s when we issue bonds, will we have problems with our rating.”

Van Winkle expects there to be even more difficulty relating to both Hartford's struggles, and the state's meaning the MDC issue may be only the tip of the iceberg.

“This is the first domino, this MDC issue without question. There will be another one coming with the governor’s budget and more coming in the legislative session.”

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