BROWNSTOWN — Faced with a deadline of less than two weeks, the Brownstown Town Council set in motion a plan Monday night that will increase sewer bills by 49.7% in November.

That 3-0 vote came after a one-and-a-half-hour public hearing in which several people questioned the four council members on hand about the need for such an increase in light of today’s conditions when the cost of everything else is rising. Councilwoman Sharon Koch was absent.

The council recently approved a $6.675 million contract with Mitchell & Stark Construction Co. Inc. of Medora to complete the project, which includes the replacement/rehabilitation of two lift stations and improvements to the wastewater treatment plant and collection system.

The new monthly sewer bill for a customer using 4,000 gallons will rise from $52.79 to $81.12.

Katie Casto Jackson with Wessler Engineering of Indianapolis said the projects involving the aging lift stations and wastewater treatment plant need to be done soon or the town could face compliance issues in a couple of years along with potential fines from state and federal regulatory agencies.

Scott Hunsucker, superintendent of Brownstown Wastewater Utility, said one of the lift stations is 57 years old and the other is 37 years old.

He said the newest piece of equipment that will be replaced at the treatment plant is 23 years old.

Hunsucker said some work was complete on rehabbing some of the collection system in 2017, and this project will give the system, which includes manholes, a life of about 50 years.

The town will pay for most of the project through a 20-year low-interest loan from the State Revolving Fund program. A $700,000 grant received from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs earlier this year will fund some of the work, while Mitchell & Stark’s bid contains a provision reducing the cost by $100,000 if the company received all of the work.

Inliner Solutions LLC of Orleans, the only other bidder, submitted a bid for just the part of the project involving the collection system.

The deadline for closing the loan is Aug. 24, and that’s why the council needed to approve the sewer rate ordinance at the end of the public hearing.

Delaying that decision would likely lead to the state denying the loan, said Mason Cochran, a consultant with Reedy Financial Group in Seymour.

“There’s really no leeway on this,” he said while attending the meeting by video conference.

The $700,000 grant, which is to be used for the work at the lift stations and wastewater treatment plant, also would be gone.

The town also has a locked-in interest of 3.3% for the loan, which would likely not remain in place if the town should ask to delay the closing, he said.

“I don’t know what that process would look like or if they would allow it,” Cochran said.

Some of those on hand expressed concerns about what effect the increase would have on people on fixed incomes, including senior citizens and young people with families.

Town resident Breanna Lynch asked the council how people who are barely making it now are supposed to make it when they have to pay 50% more on their sewer bills.

“A lot of us are just one-income families,” she said.

Councilman Mark Reynolds said at this time, users are paying $1.80 a day and will be paying $2.70 a day after the new rate goes into effect.

“It’s 90 cents a day if you break it down by days,” he said.

Others asked if the rate increase could be phased in instead of implemented all at once or if the project could be completed in phases in an effort to soften the blow for ratepayers.

Cochran said phasing in the rate increase gradually would only lead to higher costs toward the end of the 20-year payback period.

“Mathematically, if we were to do a slow increase, the end result would be a much higher increase because the end result would be backloading a lot more of the debt and waiting longer to be able to pay it off,” he said.

Jackson said the town also would lose the $100,000 Mitchell & Stark reduced from its portion of the bill for the lift stations/wastewater treatment plant.

Jackson said the town had tried to obtain federal and state grant monies in an effort to try to keep rates lower, but those efforts did not pay off as the top kept coming up short.

“There were communities where their rates are over $100,” she said.

Town resident Greg Hutcheson said he understands the town has been working hard on this project for a couple of years now, and he appreciates it.

He said he would like to see the town get ahead of some of the issues.

“It sounds like you’re starting do that a little,” he said. “This rate increase is going to hit people hard. If people can’t make that payment and stop paying, there goes your monthly revenue.”

The state requires the town to pay double payments during the first five-year period of the payback period to take care of shortfalls in revenue.

Council President Gregg Goshorn said the project is something the council is trying to do to get ahead of future issues.

“I feel this is us planning to make sure we have capabilities of more capacity,” Goshorn said.

The town recently had a chance for a project involving the school.

“There’s no way the town would have been able to handle that capacity,” he said. “If we bring the revenue in with tax dollars, the burden is less. For me, I don’t want anything rising up through your sewers. I want to get this fixed so if people do want to come here, they can come, we can handle their flow, we’re good to go. If not, five years from now and you have issues there, we don’t have solutions.”

At the end of the hearing, Reynolds’ motion to approve the ordinance setting rates was seconded by Tim Robinson and approved 3-0.

After the hearing, the council voted to approve a $847,000 contract amendment for construction administration and resident project representative (an inspector) with Wessler.

Jackson told the council the contract calls for Wessler to have someone on the project full time and a part-time inspector for the 18-month project. The cost of that work is figured into the overall cost of the project, she said.

“Wastewater treatment replacement work is a little more involved, and there are some serious implications if things aren’t installed correctly or things don’t work right,” Jackson said. “So it’s important to have someone out there full time.”

The second person is needed because parts of the project are in different areas of town.

She also said the town will only pay for the number of days the inspector or inspectors are needed.