The New Jersey Maritime Museum, which filed a tort claim with Beach Haven borough after receiving an excessively high water bill, is required to pay $1,000 of the $5,200 cost. The borough has no provision in its ordinance for forgiveness, and the potential for adding one could not be discussed until the matter was settled, said Sherry Mason, municipal clerk. The council is currently considering amending the ordinance, she noted.
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| Photo via Trip Advisor The New Jersey Maritime Museum must pay $1,000 of the $5,200 cost. |
The settlement was approved by the borough council during its regular, monthly meeting on Monday, Sept. 14. Councilman Jim White voted against it.
“We’ve taken an oath to uphold the laws of this town, and I feel like we’re usurping it by going back retroactive on an ordinance,” he said.
Attorneys tried to settle the matter multiple times. An agreement was ultimately made “so that we could move forward for the betterment of all water consumers,” said Mason.
The museum normally acquires a total of $1,000 in water charges over the course of an entire year, or between $200 and $250 a quarter, owner Deborah Whitcraft noted.
“It was such an absurd case. We don’t know (why it happened), but all of the explanations by the borough made no sense,” she said.
Whitcraft hired an engineer “to show that it wasn’t physically possible for us to use in excess of a million gallons of water in a 90-day period.” The bill was for the months of April, May and June.
During the council’s regular meeting in May, two local homeowners who each owed thousands of dollars for water charges stood before officials asking for some reprieve. Mayor Nancy Taggart Davis said the issue has been a problem for some residents due to pipes leaking and bursting during the extremely cold winter.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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