At an April 3 joint meeting of the Acton Water District (AWD, the District) Commissioners and Finance Committee (FinCom), the commissioners set the date for a Special District Meeting for Wednesday, April 22, at 7 p.m., at the AWD Headquarters, 693 Massachusetts Ave. The warrant contains one article: “To see what sums of money the District will vote to raise and appropriate to defray the usual expenses of the District.”
As reported in the Acton Exchange, the March 18 Annual District Meeting resolved only 10 of the 18 articles that had been on the posted warrant. The Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) budget motion, Article 4, failed. Later in the same meeting, a motion was made to reconsider Article 4, and the vote to reconsider also failed. Warrant articles 7-14, which dealt with transfers from surplus revenue (also known as free cash) were “passed over,” in other words not brought to a vote. As of the April 3 Commissioners’ meeting, the free cash certification paperwork had still not been submitted to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Expressing a desire to get the FY27 budget resolved, the commissioners voted to call a Special District Meeting on April 22 to consider only the budget article, while acknowledging that another special district meeting will be required before the end of the fiscal year (June 30) to take up the free cash (surplus revenue) articles.
At the April 3 Commissioners/FinCom meeting, District Manager Matt Mostoller described a proposed FY27 budget that differs from that considered at the March 18 Annual District meeting in three ways: a slight decrease in health care costs, increased spending on water meters, and a major, unanticipated new expense for rehabilitating the Kennedy Wellfield. A new FY27 budget breakdown was not available at the April 3 meeting. Mr. Mostoller stated a preliminary bottom line for the revised FY27 expense budget of $9.56 million, as contrasted with the $8.58 million expense budget that was printed in the Annual Report and considered at the March 18 Annual District Meeting. Budget details will be discussed and resolved at the next Commissioners’ Meeting, scheduled for April 13 at 7p.m. Agenda and zoom link for the April 13 meeting will be posted on the Commissioners’ meeting schedule webpage.
The Kennedy Wellfield, needing rehabilitation, is located in the northernmost corner of Acton, as shown on this map. Kennedy water is treated at the North Acton Water Treatment Plant (NAWTP). As reported by the Acton Exchange, the NAWTP was the first of the AWD treatment plants to be equipped with a treatment system for PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), with that leased system coming online in June 2024. At the April 3 meeting, Mr. Mostoller explained that while the South and Central Acton systems were off-line to install and test their PFAS treatment systems, the North Acton wells had been run more continuously than usual; there had been no two-month time window available for proper preventive maintenance of the North Acton Wells. The cost of rehabilitating the Kennedy well had been expected to be around $100,000, but now is looking more like $1 million dollars. This problem was not discovered until after the $8.58 million FY27 budget was prepared.
Although there was not a detailed revised expense budget presented at the April 3 Commissioners/ FinCom meeting, there was a detailed breakdown presented of what the higher budget would mean to rate-payers. The calculation was based on the median water-user, a household using 1380 cubic feet per quarter in the winter and 1647 cubic feet in the summer. At current rates (FY26) such a household would pay $746.86 for a year’s water (see calculator on My Water Bill webpage). In the budget considered at the March 18 Annual District Meeting, the same median water-taker would have paid $836.86 for FY27’s water. In the revised proposed budget, the median water-taker would pay $943.94 for FY27’s water. FinCom member John Petersen pointed out that the revised proposed budget would mean a 26% increase in the annual water bill of the median user, whereas the budget considered at the Annual District meeting was an 11% increase.
The Kennedy repairs are considered as maintenance rather than a capital expense, and so in the revised proposed budget are slotted into the operating budget paid for in the volumetric rate part of users’ bill rather than the fixed part of the users’ bill (service charge + debt fee). As a consequence, the ratio between usage fees and fixed fees under the proposed budget would be 58% to 42%, the same ratio as in the FY26 budget. Mr. Mostoller said that at the Annual District meeting he had not heard the voters upset with the bottom-line price tag of the $8.56 million budget; rather he heard that voters were objecting to the ratio, in other words having the FY27 cost increase loaded onto the debt fee, which disproportionately impacts low-water-usage households.
Kim Kastens is a member of the Acton Exchange Board and an associate editor. She is also the chair of the Green Acton Water Committee, and has previously published on the Green Acton website both a backgrounder and an opinion piece about charging for water. At the 2023 AWD Annual District Meeting, she was the advocate for a Citizen’s petition warrant article requesting that the AWD commission an external expert study of options for structuring future water rates. Living in the far northeast corner of Acton, she is not a customer of the Acton Water District.
