Boro aims to resolve sidewalk billing issue
Resident faults 'shock' tactics in billing for work
BY JENNA O'DONNELL Staff Writer

FAIR HAVEN - The borough's handling of bills to property owners for sidewalk installation drew criticism at the Feb. 11 meeting.

At the meeting, the Borough Council approved a sidewalk ordinance at the meeting that ratifies contracts made with property owners for payment for new sidewalks and curbs.

"The decision is in the interest of the borough's finances," said Mayor Michael Halfacre, "to waive on the interest for these seven residents and allow them to continue to make their payments. And that's where we find ourselves with this ordinance tonight, is to ratify this contract which has never been done before and to say that this is what we are going to do with these seven contracts that remain".

The borough entered into contracts with various property owners between 1998 and 2002 that require property owners to pay a specified amount to the borough for improvements.

But at Monday's meeting, resident Lawrence M. Quigley called the program "unlawful" for having bypassed the required ordinance enactment process. In his response to the ordinance, Quigley, an attorney, said that the borough had been solely responsible for its public sidewalks and curbs until the program in 1998 that "[shifted] the costs of repairing and improving the public sidewalks and curbs to the adjoining property owners".

"To implement this unlawful program, the Borough Administrator wrote to the selected property owners, falsely advising them that they were financially responsible for the costs of this sidewalk and curb program," Quigley said. "In the same letter he offered the property owners a seductive borough construction alternative to … personally contract for this work."

He said the borough would provide the property owner with all the technical details … and a 10-year financing program for the sidewalk and curb installation/improvements.

Quigley added that the borough had mailed what he called "shock documents" in the form of unsigned tax sale notices in the first week of November 2007 warning the property owners that unless their "special assessments" were paid, their homes and properties would be publicly sold on Dec. 5, 2007.

"I would have thought that you would have been deeply concerned with a fair and prompt restitution of the payments already made by property owners, rescission of outstanding contracts, and immediate removal of all liens on these properties," Quigley said.

"Without this course of remedial action the borough would be unjustly and unfairly enriched by the property owners payments," he said.

In response, Halfacre acknowledged that the arrangement had never been property ratified, adding that none of the current officials had been around at the inception of the program.

"Today we find ourselves in a situation where in the 1990s, a number of residents signed contracts with the borough promising to reimburse the borough for new sidewalks," Halfacre said. "Of those 90 some odd residents that signed the contracts, all but a small handful paid in full over the years. Then in 2003, the borough stopped sending bills for some reason".

According to Halfacre, the borough had not intended to send out the tax sale notices of November 2007, calling that a "computer glitch" resulting from a software update.

"As soon as I found out about it, I immediately spoke to everyone who was involved," said Halfacre. He said he informed the residents that there would be no tax sale and no lien placed on their properties.

Halfacre said that the decision to ratify the controversial contract was not an easy one for the council to make.

"There are seven residents who still owe money, so what do we do?" Halfacre asked.

"Do we refund money to 80 some odd residents which would run us into the hundreds of thousands of dollars even though they signed contracts with the borough that they would pay for it?

"Or do we waive any interest for the past years … and start to collect on the same terms of the original contract?"

The borough has gone with the second option for lack of a better solution, according to Halfacre.

One of the seven residents in question was in attendance at the meeting and said that the tax sale notice was a very scary thing to get in the mail. He added that as tax paying resident, not trying to walk away from the situation.

The resident went on to say that his bill for the sidewalk project had been "totally wrong," with an incorrect measurement of his property and that his queries had gone unanswered by the borough at the time. He called the whole ordeal "a disaster."

"If the borough had done things properly by way of ordinance and everything else, this would not even be a question," Halfacre said. "If the borough had taken the appropriate steps nine years ago, we wouldn't be here."