Before taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive new sewer systems, they should have some confidence spending all that money will make a difference. Most Cape towns, such as Chatham, don't have a sewage disposal problem as a big, densely populated city would have. There is no raw sewage floating in the bays, as was the case with Boston Harbor. This multi-billion dollar program is solely to deal with nitrogen in the wastewater coming out of septic systems which is said to be the prime culprit in adding the "excess" nitrogen to the Cape's embayments. Is this so? And will spending all that money make a difference?

So far, only in one Cape town, Chatham, have town officials rushed ahead to build a centralized sewer system solely because of the excess nitrogen problem without even wondering whether what the state says will in the end make a difference in the water quality of Chatham's bays.

Chatham taxpayers will soon start paying the early installments of more than $450 million in property taxes to find out -- 20 or more years from now -- whether the state's experiemental program in fact works. Some might say Chatham's selectmen are being irresponsible in refusing to join the nine Cape towns demanding an independent peer review to see if the taxpayer dollars they are being asked or forced to spend will be wasted or not. Some, including CCT, also say that town officials were irresponsible in not putting their entire costly and disruptive centralized sewer plan to a town meeting vote with all of the questions, costs, alternative solutions and other relevant facts laid out.

An eminent hydrogeologist Jesse Schwalbaum, who has worked on the Cape for many years as well as elsewhere in Massachusetts and the rest of the country, has had it with the state's arrogant refusal to subject its science and methodology to independent peer review. Having Barnstable County do a "peer review," as it proposes to do, is nonsense, since its officials have been willing accomplices of the state in pushing ahead without requiring independent verification. Another rubber stamp is not what's needed.

Schwalbaum warns: "As long as accountability, transparency and good science aren't a priority in this process, the Cape's estuaries will remain in peril no matter how many billions are spent."

"In light of what is at stake and the enormous cost, why isn't scientific confirmation and public buy-in a higher priority?"

Instead, taxpayers are being told to take what the state tells them on faith. "Shut up," the state explained.

Congressman Keating will try to get money added and to prevent cuts in wastewater loan funding.

At the press conference Eastham administrator Sheila Vanderhoef reminded those assembled that before money from whatever source is spent on tackling the so-called excess nitrogen problem citizens must be satisfied that the science dictating what they should do is sound."It's not delay for delay's sake," she said.

Citizens across the Cape are trying to obtain $650,000 in funding for the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent peer review and analysis of the science and methodology behind the recommendations for curtailing septic nitrogen flows. Whie Barnstable County has offered to conduct such a review, its personnel has been so involved in the development of the program that its independence is seen as compromised by some. There is so many billions of dollars at stake nothing less than an impartial review is needed.

To put the $650,000 in perspective, that investment could save billions.

For the Cape Cod Times report, click here.

When Barnstable County executive Paul Niedzwiecki reported to the Chatham Board of Selectmen that centralized sewering was simply “unaffordable” for Cape Cod towns and they would have to turn to innovative methods and adaptive management practices to get costs way down, we have since learned that he had much more in mind than just the alternative and innovative technologies that would greatly reduce the cost of wastewater treatment that CCT has advocated and the Cape Cod Times (June 26, 2011) has editorialized in favor of – environmentally beneficial solutions such as neighborhood cluster systems that would return treated effluent to the water table while removing nutrients as well as any large wastewater treatment plant.

Just 14 months after appearing in Chatham praising the former town manager’s financing plan for Chatham’s centralized sewer, county executive Paul Niedzwiecki appeared before the selectmen and pronounced centralized sewering dead: it’s “unaffordable.”

Niedzwiecki said, Chatham, which like Provincetown “did the right thing,” might be able to recoup some costs by selling spare WWTF capacity to nearby towns. He suggested adaptive management could also help bring costs down for towns, including Chatham. The Commision's new "vision" will include centralized sewering, satellites, cluster systems and onsite treatment. Centralized sewering for all is and "old, unsustaiable" approach and simply "unaffordable."

Certainly, integrating alternatives such as cluster systems with the existing centralized system will not just save money and be friendlier to the environment, but, ironically, it will create even more spare capacity in the WWTF for regional use. The Cape Commission accepts that view since clusters are part of their Capewide plan, as shown in the graphic below.

Niedzwiecki was not sympathizing with Chatham for its taking on such an expensive project as we had originally thought. No, instead, he was delighted that the huge Chatham WWTF is on the way to completion in mid-2012. How that was engineered by Chatham town officials is not his concern. The main point for him is that the county is now positioning Chatham’s very large, new treatment plant as a super-regional wastewater disposal node high above Cockle Cove Creek and its marshes.

What CCT charged in 2009 and 2010 now appears to be confirmed: Chatham was building a regional wastewater treatment facility to serve several towns, not just Chatham. In light of Chatham’s declining population over the past two decades, the WWTF seemed to CCT to be substantially overbuilt. Our rough calculation was that the WWTF at full capacity could accommodate between 50,000 and 60,000 active water users at the very same instant, a highly unlikely event.

Indeed, at the February 2, 2010 selectmen’s meeting, Director Duncanson remarked that the new WWTF could handle wastewater from Orleans, Brewster and Harwich as well as Chatham’s.

However, the former town manager promptly disowned any inferences that might be drawn from the Duncanson remarks. He and Director Duncanson thereafter denied ever discussing regionalization with anyone besides Harwich and then only with respect to the Muddy River watershed. They also consistently denied the WWTF was overbuilt. Allow us to be skeptical.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Chatham town officials were building a WWTF – at Chatham taxpayers’ expense -- to be part of a regional system despite their protestations to the contrary.

From the county’s perspective, the more spare capacity the WWTF has the better. Therefore, integrating alternatives such as cluster systems and permeable reactive barriers works in favor of the county’s plan while saving Chatham taxpayers property tax dollars. There is no conflict between the county's overall plan and the use of alternative and innovative technologies within Chatham to bring taxpayer costs down.

CCT has only recently gained access to the county’s map of projected regional hubs with Chatham prominently identified. Add to that the language in the FY12 state budget and the words of the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs described below and the picture becomes clear.

The map below is from a Cape Cod Commission presentation in April, 2011. Will sewage from parts or all of Harwich, Brewster and Orleans be fed into Chatham? Will Cockle Cove Creek and its marshes be able to absorb all that effluent and fresh water draining from the water table into the deeply laid sewer pipes? DEP has yet to prove they can. The same questions are being raised in Orleans, another proposed regional wastewater treatment supersite, where residents are concerned about the future of Namskatet Marsh that straddles Orleans and Brewster.

Note that the map legend refers to a variety of approaches to wastewater treatment, including satellites, clusters and onsite treatment.

The county’s wording of its request for $150,000 in seed money in the state budget is instructive as to its plans. Outside section 187 to the FY12 budget is all about Cape Cod regional wastewater planning across town lines and cutting costs through sharing facilities and approaches. At the recent Cape Cod Commission press conference, the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs announced that priority for state low cost loans for Cape wastewater projects would go to those that are part of the regional plan.

Regionalization now appears to be the state and county goal for the Cape. It is likely that control over wastewater planning and implementation will be shifted from Cape towns to the county or some new or old Capewide body. In the negotiation with the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) in its EPA law suit, one can expect that result to be written in.

Within towns there will be room for alternative and innovative technologies to keep costs down but the linked regional WWTFs will be under the control of the county or some Capewide authority which will be setting policy for all Cape towns. The goal of saving $2 billion by regionalizing treatment plants is certainly commendable, but experts tell us that 70% of a sewer system is in the piping. The county does anticipate use of clusters and other innovations within watersheds since integrating small pipes and other innovations where appropriate can play a role in saving costs. Niedzwiecki has admitted that with all the interest CLF and the EPA have in seeing the Cape’s nutrient problem addressed, there is no money on the horizon to help Cape taxpayers.

CCT’s goal has always been to bring costs down for taxpayers and avoid waste and unnecessary expense. As the county’s wastewater expert Robert Ciolek emphasizes, Chatham’s project is “expensive,” whether it’s $330 million plus inflation, $450 million or more. CCT is not opposed to regionalization as such if cost savings can be realized and the environment is better for it.

Whether Chatham voters would favor regionalization or not is not known, since it has never been put forward as an issue for discussion. Having sewage shipped in from other towns could be an emotional issue for some. It may be an environmental issue as well, since the pressure on Cockle Cove Creek and its marshes is bound to increase.

CCT believes that alternative and innovative technologies within towns can save as much as $200 million for Chatham taxpayers over the financing period. Perhaps connecting all towns regionally and running the operation centrally can save even more. The worst case sketched by the Commission would have just about every Cape town building out its own WWTF. If Chatham, just 3% of the Cape Cod land mass, has a cost of close to a half billion dollars for a centralized wastewater system, Capewide the number has to be $12-$15 billion in property taxes and fees during the financing periods if every town were to install centralized sewering. However viewed, the costs are staggering.

Centralized control worked for Greater Boston in the form of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. However, even there, a high CLF official has said (Cape Codder, May 8, 2009), in retrospect, it would have been better to have integrated some cost-saving neighborhood systems into the plan, since MWRA pumps so much water into the bay it is draining the area water table. He noted that the Cape should be especially conducive to the use of decentralized systems.

Whether centralizing will work as well for the Cape remains to be seen. Drawing up the plans will be a $500,000, two-year task, according to the FY12 budget and the Commission's press conference. But a lot more than $2 billion (the stated goal in the state budget) needs to be saved to get to an “affordable” level. (Mashpee already is planning a group of clusters instead of centralized sewering to save money and water for the water table. We do not know Mashpee’s current estimate, but, before its serious planning got underway, Mashpee was looking at the possibility of saving $300 million, before interest charges and inflation, over a centralized system.)

Having fewer WWTFs should indeed save a great deal of money, but they may increase local environmentatl concerns. Since most sewering costs are in sewer piping, CCT believes using small pipe cluster systems and permeable reactive barriers and other environmentally preferable and less expensive alternatives wherever possible can do more to help bring costs down. Even so, Cape taxpayers face daunting costs that will burden their properties for decades.

See the Cape Regionalization Plan accompanying this report for the state budget material and the Cape Cod Times article concerning the state/county press conference.

For the county regionalization presentation, see the PowerPoint Cape Regional WW Plan below, which should also be available on the Cape Cod Commission website.

Cape Regional WW Plan.ppt

Also. one can view the Cape Regional WW Plan showing Chatham as a super-regional wastewater treatment plant in pdf format, since not all viewers have PowerPoint viewers installed.

Cape Regional WW Plan.pdf

1. Barnstable County has made a dramatic turnabout on how to solve the problem of excess nitrogen in Cape Cod coastal embayments. Centralized sewering is out, it's simply "unaffordable." Other approaches are part of the answer, such as decentralized or cluster systems, which cost far less and are preferred by the federal Environmental Protection Agency for less densely populated areas such as Cape Cod towns.
2. The county has requested funds in the FY12 state budget to develop a Capewide plan utilizing centralized, satellite, cluster and onsite treatment to attack the nutrient problem troubling the Cape's embayments. .
3, Falmouth, a town of 30,000, has just voted $2.7 million to examine a very wide range of American, Canadian and European technologies from cluster systems to permeable reactive barriers to composting toilets. Town meeting feared the cost of a centralized sewer would drive families and long-time residents out of town. As one town meeting member said, "We don't want to become a gated community like Chatham."
4. Mashpee, more than twice the population of Chatham, is designing its wastewater treatment and disposal system around eight decentralized/cluster systems. It hopes it can save more than $100-$200 million by not doing a centralized system.
5. Orleans town meeting has also voted money to examine such alternatives. In fact, there will be a public forum on alternative and innovative technologies in Orleans this Saturday at the Old Jailhouse Tavern from 9 to noon. (See notice attached.) Experts from the West Coast and the East Coast will make presentations and field questions on why these alternatives make sense on Cape Cod.
6. What does all this mean for Chatham? A great deal. As county executive Paul Niedzwiecki told the Chatham Board of Selectmen, integrating alternative and innovative technologies into Chatham's wastewater plan could save property tax dollars. We believe savings could be as much as much as 25-40%.
7. What caused the county to drop its insistence that centralized sewering was the wastewater solution for Cape towns? We believe we know of one contributing factor. A knowledgeable and experienced consultant was brought on to analyze potential costs for the towns. The consultant had had significant involvement in the financial aspects of the Boston Harbor clean-up. The project cost billions and created a fierce and bitter fight in all the affected communities that was only resolved when the state legislature agreed to chip in. Even so, the per capita costs on the Cape would be five to six times what
they were for the Greater Boston communities. To get a sense of what numbers might be for Cape towns, the county made the consultant available to Chatham (and to other Cape towns) free of charge.

What the consultant found was that Chatham town officials had vastly understated likely costs. For a 20-year project like this, the consultant said the interest rate assumed was unrealistically low. In making any appraisal of costs, inflation is a factor to be taken into account. Also, the former town manager had not satisfactorily provided for operational and maintenance expenses during the 20 years of construction (estimated by Stearns & Wheler to be $30 million (before any allowance for inflation or borrowing costs).

The estimates produced by Chatham Concerned Taxpayers in 2009 and 2010 because town officials had failed to provide a realistic one took all these factors into account (even using an interest rate lower than the “optimistic” one suggested by the consultant) and derived a projected minimum cost to all property owners of more than $400 million in debt service charges on the property tax.

Not included is the estimated collective cost to those property owners forced to connect to the system, about $29 million. The total cost to taxpayers of about $430 million was almost triple the "full cost" estimate shown in the Warrant for Article 14 of the May 11, 2009 town meeting and about $160 million more than the costs presented by the former town manager at the selectmen's meeting of February 23, 2010.

An updated CCT estimate using the consultant's "optimistic" 3% interest rate and a 3.18% inflation factor derived from an EPA suggested approach for wastewater projects and borrowing construction period O&M along with borrowings for labor and materials costs produced a estimate of total debt service of approximately $460 million. As mentioned individual property owners will have additional costs to connect to the system. Approximately 2/3rds of Chatham's properties will be required to connect because they are in watersheds whose drainage has said to deposit nutrients in potentially vulnerable waters.

Both the consultant and Chatham Concerned Taxpayers used the same 2007 cost estimates prepared by Stearns &Wheler as the starting point. CCT calculated the inflation effect and the cost of construction period O&M as well as the estimated interest cost. The consultant only added his interest factor to the S&W starting costs and derived a cost incluidng interest but not inflation or O&M of $330 million, up 24% from the town official's estimate of $266 million in February, 2010. Although the town official did include a slide in his presentation showing 3% as an inflation factor, he did not take inflation into account in developing his estimate of taxpayer cost in debt service charges over the 50 year financing period.

8. With other Cape towns and the county now looking to cost-saving and environmentally preferable alternatives, Chatham taxpayers no doubt will also be interested in finding out how much can be saved on their property taxes. Clearly, the county has concluded that decentralized/cluster systems can do just as good a job of nitrogen removal as the best centralized systems (as has the EPA). Their new approach includes some centralized sewering and some cluster systems and some onsite systems.

Use of other innovative technologies can increase savings and even do a superior job of nitrogen removal with far less community disruption in a much shorter time period. And more good news is that Stearns & Wheler (now a unit of Australian-based conglomerate GHD) has just recently confirmed that it supports the position expressed by Director of Health and Environment Duncanson and the former town manager that there will be no adverse operational or financial effects if the expansion of the centralized sewer is limited to that which was authorized by the May 11, 2009 vote on Article 14. This means that in reworking the wastewater plan pursuant to the engineering principle of adaptive management the town has complete flexibility to redesign for a less costly and environmentally better result.

The recent forum in Orleans detailed why savings can be achieved in a more environmentally friendly manner. It was open to all residents of the Cape. Links to the presentations will be posted.

ORLEANS DECENTRALIZED SMALL PIPE WORKSHOP ORLEANS.pdf

If it's possible you will be out of town on May 12th, you can vote absentee. There are two links below: One is for an individual to apply for an absentee ballot. The other is for a person to apply for a family member.

application - absentee ballot.pdf

application -absentee ballot by family member.pdf

Every vote is important. Strike a blow for fiscal restraint and relief for the taxpayer.

What Ms. Gibbs found was that the recall process was void from the beginning. It did not follow the procedure required by the town charter which calls for sworn statements by 100 voters stating their grounds for the recall. In addition to a lack of sworn statements, the grounds stated for the recall were clearly false, as was known by those initiating and in charge of the process.

Ms. Gibbs presented her detailed, well researched report to the board and was heckled and harrassed throughout by some in the audience, without being reprimanded by the Chairman Leonard Sussuman.

Because of the importance of the issue, the Cape Cod Chronicle decided to publish the highlights of Ms. Gibbs' report and her comments on the the disgraceful way in which the Board of Selectmen hearing was conducted by Chairman Sussman. It appeared as a "You Guest It" article on April 14, 2011. Ms. Gibbs' letter follows:

RECALL FLAWED BECAUSE IT VIOLATED THE LAW

Heckling and snickering during Selectmen’s meetings, affectionately referring to me as “that B…” to anyone who’ll listen, doesn’t change “fact” to “opinion. Sometimes a fact is just a fact- despite the Chair allowing them free rein until finally ruling “One at a time please.”

As the first step to Recall, Chatham’s Charter requires an Affidavit signed by 100 voters. An Affidavit is a sworn statement of fact signed by Affiants to the truth, under penalty of perjury. It’s not an Affidavit unless a Sworn Declaration is made. That’s fact, not opinion, Stuart.

An Affidavit is the safeguard against false statements. Onus rests with the 100 signatories under the penalty of perjury. It vets “grounds” so that Petition signers are confident of the truth of the grounds. No such Declaration was made. Therefore this was not an Affidavit and should not have been accepted by the Town Clerk, whose duty is to assure compliance with Town Charter law. Because it did not, the Recall was invalid and Petitions should not have been distributed.

The first “Ground: Selectmen “did not have sufficient/just cause to terminate the contract.” The TM contract was not “terminated”. Employment/Contract law definition of “non-renewal” is significantly different from “termination. At the November 29 meeting it was clearly pointed out that the TM contract was a “non-renewal.” People lined up to sign the Affidavit anyway. Had there been a Sworn Declaration, they may have thought twice.

The second “Ground”: Selectmen “failed to provide sufficient and factual basis for their action.” The BOS is constrained by statute from discussing personnel matters in a public forum. To appease those who demanded the Recall, Selectmen would have been required to break the law, exposing the town to serious liability. The Ground is materially false because it’s impossible to legally comply with the demand. The “Ground” gave the false impression it was within the selectmen’s power to do so, but instead, for nefarious/secretive reasons they refused to disclose information.

The Petition was incomplete. Chatham’s Charter requires the petition “demand the election of a successor in said office.” Within 60-90 days of certification, election of successors must occur concurrent with the town Recall vote. (March) Thus the “demand” must be made. Unfortunately no candidates were willing to step up to fill the void were the Recall successful.

Voter regulations apply, following election law of “One Man- One Vote.” Signatures must be certified. Even to the untrained eye, with selectmen not disagreeing, dozens signed not only their names, but names of spouses and sometimes other family members. It’s in violation of election law to sign other than one’s own name. Petitioners can not ask or permit anyone to sign for others. Signatures must be in person; not over the phone. Consequently it’s impossible to determine how many individuals actually signed petitions. All fact.

It’s disturbing that something as serious as the potential unseating of duly elected officials was handled in such a sloppy manner, with such lack of preparation, care, and attention- a rush to judgment, sacrificing basic principles and violating laws. Recall is a right under Town Charter. With that right comes responsibility. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. It was irresponsible to not give one thought to the consequences had the Recall been successful and we were left with only 2 selectmen. An opinion.

We have a right to expect basic laws are followed, with safeguards in place to preserve the integrity of elections -- a basic duty of government. I vehemently disagree with Town Attorney Gilmore that freedom of speech and “right to petition” trumps a requirement to be accurate and truthful; that it was “no harm; no foul” because the Recall was unsuccessful; that it’s “Buyer Beware;” it’s no big deal to violate the Town Charter; that our Charter is just a suggestion; that Burden of Proof falls to the accused rather than the accusers; and to have laws enforced we must hire attorneys and/or file complaints with the state.

Mr. Gilmore never saw the Affidavit or Petitions, yet he determined there was no “need for investigation.” Because he represents Town government (Mr. Hinchey et al) and not the people, by his own admission he should not have offered any opinion, yet he offered many. I don’t understand why Mr. Whitcomb and Mr. Sussmann are remarkably uninquisitive about what transpired.

The Board has the duty to prevent Conflicts of Interest, authority to conduct investigations, and the duty to “cause laws to be enforced.” This isn’t just about Recalls. It’s a symptom that has to be diagnosed and treated. Erosion of trust and loss of faith in government is a downward spiral. If this is ignored and we don’t determine how and why this could possibly happen, it will result in further loss of trust and faith. That is an opinion which may end up becoming fact.

Elaine Gibbs

Chatham has been spending way beyond Proposition 2 1/2 for years and piling on debt so that property tax increases loom ahead for decades. How can this be stopped?

Despite our pleas for fiscal sanity going back before the FY10 budget, spending continues to grow and property taxes continue to rise.

The problem begins with the Board of Selectmen, which routinely rubberstamps the proposals of the town manager. In the first budget after the market collapse of October, 2008, Selectmen Sussman, Bergstrom and Whitcomb okayed a three-year union contract calling for 7, 5, and 5% increases in salary while taxpayers were reeling from the demolition of their life savings. Cost of living increases were given when federal statistics showed there was ZERO inflation.

A change is needed. We need a new independent voice for spending restraint. Bob Long, who has been speaking out against waste and unwise commitments being made by the town, is running for selectman. He sounds just like the person we need to bring spending and the rise in property taxes under control.

Be sure to vote in the election, Thursday, May 12, 2011. Absentee ballots can be cast. Applications for absentee ballots are available now by calling the Town Clerk's Office. (508) 945-5101 to have the application mailed to you. Or you can download forms here: There is a form for an individual to apply and a form for a family member to apply. Just click on either form to download to your computer to print out. Instructions are on the forms.

application - absentee ballot.pdf

application -absentee ballot by family member.pdf

Now the Cape Cod Times reports there is no more federal stimulus money and even cheap loan money from the state may be in short supply.

Chatham Concerned Taxpayers also had urged Chatham town officials to consider less expensive and environmentally preferable alternatives to centralized sewering (e.g., cluster systems and permeable reactive barriers) that could save Chatham taxpayers tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. These calls were rejected.

In addition, CCT had urged town officials to join with the nine other Cape towns in getting a competent third party review of the state's methodology, but they refused to do that.

A big problem with rushing ahead as Chatham has done is that there is still considerable doubt about the state's recommendations for what has to be done to ensure Cape Cod bay waters are healthy. Nine Cape towns (but not Chatham) are seeking a peer review by the National Academy of Sciences of the state proposed methodology and whether it will in fact make the improvements in Cape waters it is claimed it will do.

Ironically, neither the county, the state nor the federal government wants to put up the $600,000 for the peer review while they are insisting Cape towns spend eight to ten billions on centralized sewering that no one knows will do the job.

Yet Chatham town officials went ahead to build a brand new, completely separate, gigantic wastewater treatment plant right now -- to be completed next year -- that will only work right if thousands more properties are connected than are connected now. And they didn't tell told town meeting voters that's what they were going to do.

Town officials should have gradually enlarged the existing treatment plant as needed to service properties as they were added to the sewer system over 20 years. In fact, in the Warrant for that vote, they had told town meeting voters that's what they were going to do.

The plan as stated was to go back to town meeting every few years for more money to build out the system. At each stage town voters could decide to stop altogether or to shift to integrating alternatives that would be less expensive and just as good if not better as technology improved. "Adaptive management" was to be the watchword.

However, by building the huge new treatment plant upfront, it appears that "adaptive management" will be largely foreclosed and subsequent town meeting votes merely rubber stamps. In a letter to the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs dated February 16, 2010, Chatham's director of Health and the Environment Robert Duncanson told the Secretary that Chatham had "committed" to funding the full 20-year centralized sewer plan by their unknowing authorization of the immediate construction of the mega treatment plant at its May, 2009 town meeting.

Nothing in the Warrant for that meeting suggested that taxpayers were being locked into the 20-year spending plan by a vote to enlarge and upgrade the treatment plant while adding a few hundred properties to the existing system and updating the connector piping from downtown to the existing treatment plant.

Now it appears we're stuck.

We will have a gigantic overbuilt treatment plant and only property taxes to pay for whatever sewering lies ahead.

While town officials claim the total cost is "only" $266 million after stimulus savings, that number ignores inflationary costs over 20 or more years of construction and assumes 2% money from the state for 30-year loans that just won't be available. A more realistic estimate is over $400 million, actually well over half a billion dollars for property owners when all costs (e.g., connections, annual fees) are taken into account. If the town has to fall back on its own bonding capacity instead of state loans the total cost would be much higher.

Will Chatham wind up with a white elephant of a gigantic treatment plant on its hands for which $40 million of taxpayer money has been spent? The few hundred properties that are being added to the existing system now could easily be handled by the existing wastewater treatment plant.

This is a huge mess. Unfortunately, there's more.

The location of the new mega treatment plant and the existing treatment plant are at an elevation above Cockle Cove Creek. The plan is to increase the flow of treated effluent from the treatment plant(s) from the present 100,000-150,000 gallons a day to 2-3 million gallons a day. But can Cockle Cove Creek and its adjacent marsh handle such an increase? In 2009 Forbes Magazine called Cockle Cove Creek the fourth most polluted beach in America!

Is that pollution draining down from the treatment plant site? Citizens are demanding that a hydrogeological study be done before any more effluent is pumped into Cockle Cove Creek. They are charging that engineers working for Chatham did not adequately evaluate the feasibility of the site for a massive treatment plant, but just concluded it was the only place to put it and figuratively crossed their fingers. No one knows what a new study will reveal. Increasing effluent flow 20-fold into an already polluted creek doesn't sound like a sound environmental plan.

Maybe Chatham should just stop right now on its sewer construction. It has the right under its construction contracts to do so.

What should be done?

Chatham should join the other nine Cape towns in demanding a peer review of the state's methodology for improving coastal bay waters. It's better for ten towns to spend $600,000 now than to be forced into spending $8-$10 billion needlessly.

Chatham should cooperate in an objective scientific review of the hydrogeology of the Cockle Cove Creek site for its appropriateness for a 20-fold increase in effluent flow.

With huge costs ahead and no financial aid in sight, Chatham should update its review of available alternative technology that is less expensive and environmentally better. A benefit of alternatives such as cluster systems and permeable reactive barriers is that treated effluent need not all be dumped in one place such as Cockle Cove Creek. It can be dispersed widely throughout the town without adding to the pollution of Cockle Cove Creek -- which should be cleaned up, not polluted further.

Chatham taxpayers are facing staggering costs. The biggest by far is the centralized sewer, which is the most expensive way to address the problem the state says needs to be addressed if Chatham’s bays are going to stay healthy.

Let’s find out if the state’s plan is the right one. If it is, let’s correct the problem in the most cost-effective and environmentally sound way, which is not centralized sewering. Even the EPA says that use of clusters can save 25% to 50% over the cost of a centralized sewer.

Saving $100 million or more of property taxpayer dollars with alternatives to centralized sewering makes sense. It’s not too late to do that. It will take courage for town officials to adjust to these new financial realities and change course. This they should do.

Selectmen Seldin, Roper and Summers were vindicated.

They had acted in the best interests of the town in deciding there was no time to lose in facing up to problems which had been too long neglected during the reign of Town Manager Hinchey. Too much debt, too many obligations loom ahead and to deal with them required a new face and a new determination, someone not wedded to the overspending days of the past.

How did this "controversy" arise? After all, it was no surprise that the Board of Selectmen were displeased with the performance of the Town Manager. In his most recent review published in the Chronicle in February, 2010, the Town Manager's score was 72. In most law firms and other businesses anybody who received a performance rating that low would have been shown the door. Instead, the selectmen agreed to let him serve out his contract until June 30, 2011. But then the Town Manager asked for a new one-year contract. No surprise, the answer was no. Big problems are looming for the town and getting a new town manager aboard for the next several years was the understandable priority.

So what happened? The Cape Cod Chronicle suddenly created a firestorm with an editorial headlined "Hinchey Lynching?" as the selectmen and the Town Manager were working out his pension, vacation and other credits to wind up his five-year contract. Indeed, all five selectmen and the Town Manager signed an agreement tying up all the loose ends. Were it not for the Chronicle, that would have been the end of it. The Chronicle then followed up with a front page "news" article about Hinchey being "ousted," which was not the case at all.

Why the Chronicle chose to inflame passions as it did is an interesting question. Clearly, over the years the Town Manager had supplied the Chronicle with many an exclusive story about what was happening in the town and that special access would be gone along with the Town Manager, as perhaps it feared. Did the Chronicle think it more important to keep that special information source than let the selectmen get on with preparing for several difficult years ahead? We would hope not, but otherwise we're mystified. Did they just want to stir up a controversy to sell newspapers? We certainly hope that wasn't the case. Once hysteria had been ignited, a great deal of poison was spread and needless damage to the reputations of conscientious public servants was done. All in all, it was a poor performance by the Chronicle and its editor Mr. Wood.

The performance of the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Leonard Sussman was particularly disappointing. His conduct of the public selectmen's meeting to ratify the decisions the board had made in executive session was an embarrassment for the town. Before a room full of friends of the Town Manager brought there by the Chronicle's incendiary reporting,he publicly tried to bully Selectman Seldin into changing her vote not to award a new one-year contract to the Town Manager, apparently feeling as a woman she would buckle under his pressure, which she did not. She firmly stated she had considered the matter very carefully and was doing what was best for the town. Everyone who knows her knows that to be the case.

That wasn't enough for Mr. Sussman. After the public 5-0 vote ratifying the executive committee decision, Mr. Sussman waved a copy of the town charter in the air, pointed to it and intoned that in that charter were provisions for the recall of selectmen whose action citizens didn't like. "Actions have consequences," he said. With that inducement by the chairman of the board of selectmen, the witch hunt was on. .

It was a wretched display of incredibly poor judgment by Mr. Sussman. He caused selectmen Seldin, Roper and Summers to be subjected to unjustified humiliation and anxiety for a matter of weeks. The Chronicle lit the match and Mr. Sussman poured the gasoline.

That wasn't right.

That Mr. Sussman later apologized for his behavior did not wipe away the hurt that he caused and the embarrassment he brought to the town.

No apology has been forthcoming from the Chronicle.

What basis did close friends of the Town Manager and favored town employees have to launch a recall petition drive against selectmen Florence Seldin, Tim Roper and Sean Summers?

They apparently did not like it that the selectmen decided to seek a new town manager to take over when the present town manager's five-year contract expires according to its terms on June 30, 2011. Two selectmen wanted to sign a new contract for the present town manager for one year, but the majority decided this was no time for delay since several very difficult years for the town lie ahead.

That's it. No moral turpitude, no theft of public monies, no perjury, just elected people using their judgment as to what is best for Chatham.

The recallers have been out on the sidewalks, at the dump and filling town lobbies with their three petitions containing affidavits charging Seldin, Roper and Summers with voting to terminate the Town Manager's employment. These are obviously false statements made under oath.

The Town Manager's five-year contract will end according to its terms on Jun 30, 2011. No selectman voted to terminate the Town Manager's contract. This fact was known to the organizers of the petition drive before they began the drive. Why did they then make false statements such as this? Did they decide that stating that the selectmen voted to terminate the Town Manager's contract without just cause would be much more inflammatory and more likely to get people to sign their petitions?

Infomed legal opinion is that these false affidavits invalidated the petitions from the beginning. These were not accidental misstatements, but false statements that were knowingly made.

The recall petitioners have created a poisonous atmosphere, unjustly raising suspicion amongst the population about the integrity of the selectmen. They have unjustly sought to damage their reputation and to do them harm. There can be no question that those making these false accusations knew that such accusations, knowingly and deliberately made, would be likely to cause mental anguish as well.

For such situations the law provides remedies. Making a false statement in an affidavit can be a criminal offense. Civil damages can be sought for unjust damage to reputation and mental anguish.

After an early flurry of letters to the local paper supporting the recall petitioners, people began to grasp the magnitude of the unjust insult to the selectmen and last week's letters were strongly in favor of the three selectmen's position and against the present town manager, suspicion being voiced that he was the one principally behind the recall drive, something we do not know.

The deadline for filing sufficient signatures is 5 p.m., Tuesday, December 21. Hopefuly, the three separate petitions will fail. If not, steps will be taken immediately to have the petitions invalidated because of their falsity.

In addition to the letters to the editor this past week Fran and Jackie Meaney paid for an ad that appeared in that issue of the Cape Cod Chronicle. It can be read here. FranJackie Meaney Statement.pdf

The three -- Florence Seldin, Sean Summers and Tim Roper -- decided delaying the decision on a new town manager for a year made no sense. After months of negotiation on vacation pay, severance and the like the five selectmen and the Town Manager made and signed an agreement. It was subsequently ratified by a 5-0 vote in an open selectmen's meeting. That should have been the end of it.

Dissatisfaction with the Town Manager's performance has been increasing in recent years. His most recent performance evaluation by the selectmen (reported in February of 2010) was a D or C-, hardly a ringing endorsement. And that was before the horrific bungling of the start to the sewer piping work on Route 28. With virtually no notice and with no prior consultation with local businesses or residents, the Town Manager had the heavy equipment show up and disruption and hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions in lost business followed. So a decision not to re-hire the Town Manager for another year but to go forward for a fresh start made eminent good sense.

After the public meeting to ratify the agreement reached by the five selectmen and the Town Manager, close friends of the Town Manager and some favored town employees (or their spouses) began an unprecedented recall effort to throw out of office the majority of the selectmen whose votes carried the decision not to rehire the Town Manager. Recall has never been used in Chatham. It is in the charter for extraordinary cases such as fraud, malfeasance and crimes, not for protesting a routine decision such as the hiring of a new town manager. It is like impeachment at the federal level.

The most disturbing aspect of the public meeting to ratify the agreement the five selectmen and the Town Manager had reached was the behavior of Chairman Sussman and Selectman Whitcomb. Even though they had signed the agreement with the Town Manager and publicly joined in voting for it 5-0, they publicly criticized the majority and applied pressure at the meeting in an effort to get one of the three to buckle. Sussman's effort was obviously directed at Florence Seldin, which was a despicable thing for him to do. To her credit, she let it be known she would not be intimidated. She had agonized over the decision for many days and made the decision in the best interests of the town. Sussman concluded his demagogic behavior by waving the town charter at the audience and urging a recall action.

See for yourself (click on the photo to get rolling):

There may be a slight glitch; if it stops move the little black dot on the line at the bottom slightly to the right and it should start up. There is about 3:40 of Chatham scenes for introduction which can be skipped by moving the black dot to the right.

You can also view directly on the town website. Click here.

Town Counsel as recently as last year ruled that selectmen who vote for a matter must then publicly support it, even though they had initially objected to it. The Town Manager in late October, 2008, right after the successive market collapses of August and October, signed a very rich three-year union contract calling for compensation increases ranging between 5-7%. This was done despite the fact that many if not most town residents had suffered massive losses in their life savings. At the selectmen's meeting to approve the contract, Selectman Summers voted against approval, but it was approved 3 to 1. Subsequently, when it was incorporated into the budget, Summers voted with the other selectmen to recommend the warrant question on the budget, but said he would speak against it at town meeting. Town Counsel ruled he could not undermine the affirmative vote he had cast.

The obligation of Sussman and Whitcomb is the same. They signed the agreement with the Town Manager. They joined in a unanimous public vote to approve it. Therefore, they appear to be in violation of the rule enunciated by Town Counsel, as well as policies of the selectmen, particularly 3(c) and 3(d), in attacking the agreement made in executive session and urging hostile action against the three selectmen, as they both did at the selectmen's meeting after the unanimous approval vote.

">See for yourself:

The recall effort quickly turned ugly with unfounded charges lodged against the majority selectmen in flyers, letters to the local papers and the recall petitions themselves.

Citizens going to a special town meeting on school regionalization were harassed to sign recall petitions. People entering the public Community Center this past Friday met a bullying crowd in the lobby seeking their signatures on recall petitions set up on the reception desk used by the town employee on duty. It looked as if the recall was officially sanctioned by the town employee in charge. Outrageous.

The Cape Cod Chronicle fed the flames (indeed, set them) with a headline "Hinchey Lynching?" The paper referred to the decision not to renew as the Town Manager being "ousted," which it clearly was not. The Town Manager will complete his current contract as agreed. The Chronicle said the Town Manager had not been reviewed since 2008, even though the Chronicle itself published a report of the most recent review (the D or C- review) on February 4, 2010.

Each selectman voting not to renew the Town Manager's employment had his or her own reasons. As with any such personnel decision in any business, details about the reasons for non-renewal were kept confidential. There can be no question that Florence Seldin, as well as the other selectmen, did what they concluded was best for the town. Seldin had been a tireless volunteer on many committees for years before becoming a selectman. She works hard, she digs for the facts, she is honest, fair and open. She votes too often for more spending than CCT likes, but she has our respect. Tim Roper said at the selectmen's meeting he had been a friend of the Town Manager for years, so his decision was not personal, but made to take the town in a more responsible spending direction. Sean Summers has served the town faithfully and well, being a lone voice calling for more attention to taxpayer concerns and ending overstaffing and overspending, for seven years.

Chatham Concerned Taxpayers certainly supports, indeed, applauds, the decision to seek a new town manager. The reign of the present town manager has been characterized by chronic overspending and steadily rising tax bills. The tax rate is meaningless. It's the result of Chatham's inflated property assessments (6th highest per capita in the state) and the fact that annually the town benefits from property tax windfalls paid by non-residents who impose minimal cost burdens on the town.

Proposition 2 1/2 in Massachusetts was meant to be a restraint on spending and the rise of property taxes in cities and towns. But in Chatham over the past decade the average spending increase each year has been about 6%, far above 21/2%. Indeed, according to state records, our neighbor Orleans, about the same size geographically and about the same in population, spends about 30% less per year than Chatham does. That's currently a difference of $9-$10 million per year. That gap will get larger as debt services charges for the enormously expensive sewer (CCT estimate: $450-$500 million) start hitting.

Chatham capital projects always seem to be bigger and more expensive than many thought they should be. To replace a 3,000 square foot community center for the children a 22,000 square foot project costing $10 million resulted. The children only use about 3,000 square feet. The rest of the building is underutilized. Some functions were added to use up the extra space, such as an exercise room for adults. Poor planning for children and adults: No locker rooms, no showers. Meeting rooms are empty most of the time since there is ample public meeting space elsewhere in town.

Nearing completion is a kind of second town hall to house the police and planning and permit issue people. At most about eight police will be on duty at any one time, we're told; nonetheless, they will have 19,000 square feet to luxuriate in. Despite the police having access to the exercise room at the community center, they will have their own gym in their new headquarters. As for the planning/permitting folks, they will rattle around in 20,000 square feet. The $17 million structure, dubbed the Taj Mahal by some, actually will cost more than that because it was built without a wastewater disposal system. Running piping up George Ryder Road from Route 28 will add at least a few hundred thousand if not more to the cost. Early plans for a new fire station also include a gym. And so it goes.

Readers can scroll through earlier entries on this website and find many, many reasons to be dismayed about the present Town Manager's years in office.

But, one may argue, aren't all these decisions made by the selectmen or town meeting?

In function, yes, in reality, no.

Why is the president of the United States limited to eight years? Because one administration over time acquires more and more power and controls more and more of the flow of information.

This is true in Chatham as well, but the administration in this town is the Town Manager.

This Town Manager has negotiated every contract establishing salaries and benefits for all unionized non-school employees. He has set the salary for almost every other non-school employee. He has hired many if not most of them. Needless to say, they are responsive to his wishes.

All information flows to and through the Town Manager. The Town Manager not only carries out the policies set by the selectmen, he is their principal advisor on setting policies, establishing budgets and proposing projects. It's no surprise that what he proposes usually gets rubber stamped by the board of selectmen and carried at town meeting. He says he doesn't set policy, only executes what the selectmen decide. Hogwash. He's in control.

Do the selectmen know about what they're voting for? Do they know all their options? Does town meeting? In many cases the answer is "No." From our close observation over the past two years, the Town Manager presents information to support his position and does his best (usually successfully) to keep contrary information from getting to the selectmen or town meeting or voters in general. At town meeting, town employees, their relatives and friends are a formidable bloc of votes and budgets with fat raises and increases in pension and health benefits always seem to get approved. The first town meeting spending plan after the October 2008 market collapse proposed by the Town Manager provided raises of 5-7% for all town employees. The public employee bloc vote prevailed over the objections of some 300 plus voters. Did the Warrant detail how rich the raises were? No.

Were Chatham voters, reeling from losses in their savings, told that they were voting compensation increases for public employees who already earned far more than most of the households in town are living on? No.

Mean household income in Chatham is $57,379 or less (2008 Census figures). CCT calculates that the average full-time town employee has total annual compensation in excess of $70,000.

In fact, the Town Manager's FY10 spending plan not only contained those rich increases in compensation, overall it exceeded expected FY10 revenues by more than $1 million. The Town Manager used off-budget money such as the emergency fund to fill the gap; how could there be an emergency when town employees are getting such handsome raises?

The FY10 spending plan deficit may have been closer to $2 million than $1 million since non-property tax revenues were in decline. How much they were down was not known because the Town Manager refused to provide that information to CCT and the Finance Committee despite repeated requests.

That FY10 deficit spending made for an unbalanced FY11 stuation, which the Town Manager "solved" by pushing as much as he could into FY12. "Cuts" in spending were minimal. The FY12 crisis is the culmination of years of overspending under the direction of this Town Manager made dramatically worse by the FY10 spending plan that was far, far in the red. At a time when CCT called for fiscal prudence, level spending with FY09 and deferral of all non-emergency capital projects until good economic times returned, the Town Manager imprudently continued his overspending ways.

As for how the Town Manager planned to and did ram the centralized sewer through town meeting without any vote on the overall plan or providing any honest information about taxpayer costs, please review our many entries on that. He wanted a hugely expensive 19th century centralized sewer for Chatham and he got it. Will it really improve Chatham's embayments as claimed? No one knows. That's why nine Cape towns are now discussing with the National Academy of Sciences a peer review of the state plan which Chatham alone forged ahead with. Before these towns spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their taxpayers' dollars, they want to know the science is good and what they're being told to do by the state will in fact make an improvement in their coastal waters. Was Chatham's Town Manager irresponsible in making Chatham the guinea pig of an unproven, untested state plan? We think so.

We hope the citizens of Chatham will show their good sense and that the recall actions will fail. It is astonishing that the Town Manager has not asked his friends and supporters to desist, but has allowed the poison to spread. He signed an agreement. He was not under duress. Even his two supporters on the board signed it, a clear indication that the agreement was acceptable to the Town Manager if not what he had hoped.

It's time to move on.

The seach process for a new town manager is beginning. Chatham is an attractive assignment and a host of qualified applicants is assured. We hope many folks will volunteer to serve on the five-person search committee being established by the Board of Selectmen.

First, the Town of Dennis signed on to the petition initiated by the Orleans Board of Selectmen, bringing the number of towns in support to nine (of 14, Provincetown doesn't have a nitrogen problem like the others).

A representative of the National Academy of Science met in Barnstable this past week with county leaders to discuss how this might work. The word is that the National Academy of Science is eager to do the peer review. It understands that some eight to ten billion dollars of Cape taxpayer dollars are riding on what the DEP/MEP methodology says should be done and no one wants to see money of that magnitude wasted.

As a consequence, county officials, who originally had decided not to support the Orleans initiative, reversed themselves and came out in support of the NAS peer review. The executive director of the CCC Paul Niedzwiecki told NAS representative Susan Roberts this:

"I would welcome the National Academy of Sciences to look at the science and some (treatment) implementations. I would love to have that sort of objectivity to be completely confident that we are headed in the right direction, and if we are not, I'd like to know that too."

So would all Cape taxpayers, including those in Chatham.

Also, State Representative Sarah Peake (whose district Chatham is in) pledged her support. She and the other three Cape state representatives are preparing a joint letter of support to be sent to the Cape's Congressman Bill Delahunt.

Six billion dollars have been poured into Chesapeake Bay to solve its nitrogen problem, but after years of effort the federal EPA has said it all has been a failure. No noticeable improvement has resulted. Cape taxpayers cannot afford a mistake like that. No doubt the NAS hopes what it learns in the Cape Cod review will be helpful for the Chesapeake Bay as well.

Before each Cape town commits to spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, it wants to know that the science, methodology and models are sound and that the proposed expenditures will in fact deliver the desired results in bay water improvements.

Chatham is the only town that has rushed ahead without questioning what the DEP/MEP has said it should do. The DEP/MEP program is untesed, unproven and has never been subjected to an independent third-party review. Chatham, in effect, is the DEP's guinea pig.

The Town Manager pushed the town into the implementation phase within weeks after the Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan was finalized with no opportunity for taxpayers and other citizens to learn all the details of the plan, such as what it would do, what it would cost them, why the centralized sewer system proposed by the Town Manager was chosen and why lesser cost alternatives that EPA considers preferable were not chosen or at least to some extent integrated into the plan to save money.

Also, it was discovered later that the Town Manager's plan involved immediately building the wastewater treatment plant to its 20-year capacity to service, as CCT calculates it, some 55,000 people. CCT questioned why the plant was being overbuilt like that.

Engineers have told us that if the plant right now is built to that capacity, the town must go on and build out sewering to get that much wastewater or the plant won't function cost-effectively, efficiently or even do the job of removing contaminants such as nitrogen as required.

Taxpayers didn't know with their vote for some small expansion of the existing sewer system piping and an upgrade of the treatment plant they were being in effect forced to go forward with 20 more years of funding for sewering, whether they wanted to or not. Because of the way it was explained in the Warrant they had every reason to believe that the treatment plant would be concurrently upgraded as voters voted (if they did so) to add more sewering every two years for the next 20 years.

It's not too late to scale back the treatment plant right now to just service what's being added in sewering pursunat to the May 11, 2009 town meeting vote in addition to the existing small downtown area, so taxpayers will retain their choices and flexibility.

We might even, after the NAS peer review, get a fully informed town meeting to vote on a full plan that adequately takes into account the results of the NAS peer review and all options, including alternatives such as cluster systems and permeable reactive groundwater barriers that can reduce costs dramatically. We all want to make sure the money invested will do the job.

CCT asked the Chatham selectmen on July 6th to sign on to the peer review request, but they said no (3-2, Summers and Roper in favor), principally because at that time the Cape Cod Commission wasn't supporting it.

But that has now changed and the CCT has renewed its request that Chatham join with the other towns and the county in supporting the NAS peer review. Taxpayers in Chatham are no more interested in wasting money than other Cape towns. Read our letter to the selectmen sent August 23rd.

CCT- BOS Peer Review 8 23 10.pdf

CCT in the letter also pointed out there is no urgency involved. The entire project ought to be put on hold till the answers come in from the National Academy of Sciences. (Under the Stearns & Wheler plan adopted by the Town Manager the town was warned by the DEP that it would take several years after the 20 years of construction before any water improvement might be seen, if then.)

A halt is urgently needed right now with respect to the sewering along Route 28 which caused substantial losses for businesses in the spring. The town should skip the fall sewering work on Route 28. Businesses were hit badly in the spring, but will suffer even more in September and October, which are normally much better months for revenues than the spring months Under its contracts the town has flexibility to terminate, suspend or reschedule work.

It is not too late for the town to do the right thing in protecting taxpayers. As the executive director of the Lewis Bay project said after meeting with the NAS, paraphrasing, "We know we have a problem. We need to forge a consensus about what has to be done. The NAS review will help attain that consensus." Chatham, as an environmental leader, should be part of forging that consensus.

Every Chatham citizen and taxpayer should tell the selectmen they want to know their money isn't being wasted on this centralized sewer project. Support the National Academy of Sciences review.

Spending for operations in FY10 went up substantially (including 6-7% salary increases for all town employees) and non-emergency capital projects were pushed forward, a town hall annex and a hugely expensive centralized sewer project that, in our view, was staggering overkill for whatever anyone might argue needed to be done for clean coastal waters.

Worst of all, the Big City Sewer was being pushed into implementation only weeks after the Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan (Plan) was finished without a fully informed town meeting being given the chance to considere and vote on the entire Plan, even though it represented the single largest project by far in the history of Chatham.

As we have detailed elsewhere, CCT believes the vote for upgrading the main piping between the downtownexisting sewer system and the existing wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) and the upgrade of the WWTF itself was void. This is because the information in the Warrant on Article 14 prepared by the Town Manager misrepresented the costs of the Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan (Plan) and failed to disclose critical facts, namely, that the Town Manager was planning to immediately enlarge the WWTF to its 20-year 100% capacity. In effect such an enlargement would force future town meetings to approve requests for additional sewer piping extensions, whether they wanted to or not. Any competent professional engineer will state that a plant will only operate efficiently at its design capacity. If the WWTF is enlarged all at once to its ultimate capacity instead of incrementally as sewer extentions are voted, voters will have no choice to consider alternatives that might be integrated into the wastewater system to save substantally on costs. In effect, a fraud was perpetrated on the voters at Town Meeting.

How right CCT was to urge caution in light of economic conditions, which have turned out to be worse and lasting longer than we had suspected. Present fears are that the what looked like a recovery may now collapse.

Knowledgeable observers are now saying the U.S is bankrupt. We don't know if state and local liabilities (acknowledged and off-budget, e.g. unfunded pensions) are in the staggering estimates of the "fiscal gap" -- $130 to $202 trillion. Probably not.

Spending at the national level has to be cut dramatically and taxes may have to be raised. Some, such as U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), have plans that will get federal liabilities down to a manageable percentage of GDP over a few decades without tax increases. Others want to impose a European-style value added tax which will not only "solve" the entitlement crisis, it will enable the federal government to hand out even more goodies. Such a tax will be destructive of private business and make us more like a European welfare state.

With the federal government bankrupt, what about Massachusetts? State finances are in crisis. Is it broke, too? In fact, right now Congress is approving a bill to bail out Massachusetts (and other states) with borrowed money to keep public employees on the state and local payrolls, thus adding to the national debt.

Massachusetts is running chronic deficits. Health care spending is escalating alarmingly. Unfunded liabilities for public employee benefits and other unaffordable entitlements will have to be dealt with. Will they do something meaningful? Tough decisions have been deferred for years, so spending cuts, however badly needed, may take second place to raising taxes.

That's the usual Massachusetts response. Whatever is done, state aid to cities and towns is likely to fall, not rise, in the years to come -- even if casinos are approved and built.

With dire consequences likely to befall all citizens as the national and state govenments grapple with their overspending, what about Chatham's spending? If, say, Social Security payments are going to be cut for current retirees as many are predicting, what about Chatham taxpayers' ability to pay taxes to support local spending with increased taxes levied by the federal and state governments being likely? Can they bear not only a continuation of overspending but an explosion of overspending?

What kind of shape is Chatham in to face as this fiscal crisis unfolds?

For fiscal 2010 Chatham used off-budget financing of between $1 million and $2 million to cover spending. Emergency funds were raided.

For fiscal 2011, spending cuts were minor if not miniscule. Instead, many FY11 costs were rolled into fiscal 2012, thus presenting a "doubled-up" cost challenge for FY12. Rather than realistic spending cuts to balance the budget in FY11 to avoid a FY12 crisis, the Town Manager proposed new taxes on hotels and meals, which the town meeting wisely rejected.

The Town of Chatham has been living rich for years on the property tax payments of second home owners, who pay over 60% of property taxes and receive relatively few services. This has enabled town officials to push spending up by about 6% each year for a decade through use of the deceptive device known as "debt drop-off" and annual "capital exclusions," half of which really were for ordinary maintenance that should have been subject to Proposition 2 1/2.

In fiscal 2011 overspending finally caught up to overtaxing, leading to the cost rollovers to fiscal 2012. As mentioned, the solution proposed by the Town Manager was more taxes. He also said an override to fund the FY12 budget is inevitable. It isn't.

Chatham already spends 30% more each year than our sister town of Orleans (about the same size geographically and in population). That's about $8-$9 million "extra" spending per year.

Are there other fiscal problems for Chatham besides the too rich and growing operating budget? There are.

Chatham's unfunded pension and health insurance liabilities for its public employees realistically estiimated are somewhere between $70 and $100 million compared to current annual town revenues of about $34 million. It's hard to say these are sustainable.

Add to those liabilities the more than $400 million for the unnecessary, hugely expensive Big City Sewer the Town Manager has chosen for the town, which he already has in the early stage of construction.

That's at least $500 million in liabilities that are likely to fall largely or solely on the property tax, which currently constitutes about 70% ($25 million) of the town's present revenues.

Only about $2.7 million is being charged this fiscal year to the property tax for debt service.

Annual debt service charges just for the Hinchey centralized sewer will balloon to $13-14 million over the next 20 years and stay at that high level for ten years.

In addition, there is debt service for past capital projects (currently $3 million a year) not being charged to the property tax yet that will have to be paid. Debt service charges for the "palatial" (so termed at the summer non-resident meeting this month) town hall annex ($17 million) and a fire station ($8-$10 million?) will be added soon. These debt service projections assume no other capital needs for the town for 50 years. How realistic is that? What we know is coming will depress spending on operations and other capital projects for decades, unless sanity prevails.

One can hardly think of a worse time for Chatham to be expanding its liabilities more than ten-fold.

The Town Manager has not produced a five-year forward fiscal forecast for the town such as other towns on the Cape have done (e.g., Sandwich). So townspeople are not aware of the disasters that lie ahead.

Chatham already has more debt per capita than any other town on Cape Cod. That it will be going up ten times is principally due to the Town Manager choosing a Big City Sewer for Chatham. Why is it needed? If it is to solve whatever "excess nitrogen" problem Chatham has in our coastal waters, it's massive overkill. And that's assuming there is a problem that needs to be solved and that town action can solve it.

In deciding what can be done to maintain Chatham's fiscal soundness, every expenditure item needs to be examined, including the elephant in the room -- the centralized sewer system.

We can stipulate that everyone wants healthy waters around Chatham.

All Cape towns but Provincetown are said to have excess nitrogen in their coastal embayments that is causing algae blooms, eutrophication, death of eel grass and so forth. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) commissioned scientists at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (SMAST) for a project (Massachusetts Estuaries Project or MEP) to develop a model to determine "acceptable levels" of nitrogen in the 89 embayments of Cape Cod and what must be done to reduce excess nitrogen to those acceptable levels. Despite requests by Cape towns for years the DEP has refused to subject the DEP-funded methodology to an independent peer review.

In fact, those waters most recently tested are very healthy. Tests by Orleans scientists announced earlier this month found that Pleasant Bay and all the embayments at the Orleans end of Pleasant Bay surpass the standards set by the state and no change in wastewater infrastructure is needed. In addition, those scientists have discovered that nitrogen originating in septic systems from all four bordering towns (Orleans, Brewster, Harwich and Chatham) contribute less than 1% of the nitrogen in Pleasant Bay. Spending tens or hundreds of millions to sewer those septic sources therefore would have no appreciable effect on the nitrogen content of Pleasant Bay. Precipitation and storm water runoff contribute far more nitrogen to the bay.

It is understandable that towns want to know that the DEP/MEP science is good and that their recommendations will in fact make the projected (or hoped-for) improvements before they spend hundreds of millions of dollars.

Nine of the 14 Cape towns affected by DEP/MEP findings of excess nitrogen have now joined to seek a peer review of the DEP-funded methodology by an unimpeachable authority the National Academy of Sciences. State Representatives Sarah Peake (who represents Chatham and neighboring towns) and Matt Patrick (who represents his town of Falmouth and other nearby towns) have already expressed support for this initiative (which was organized by the Orleans selectmen).

Chatham Concerned Taxpayers wrote the Chatham selectmen urging them to join with the other towns.

CCT ChSel July 6 2010.pdf

It is difficult to understand why Chatham rushing ahead to build a Big City Sewer at such a staggering cost without questioning the DEP/MEP methodology, which thus far is untested, unproven and not peer reviewed. In fact, Chatham is a half billion dollar guinea pig.

By what logic is a majority of Chatham selectmen refusing to join in the petition for a peer review? If they are confident of the science and what it will accomplish, they have nothing to fear from such a review. If the peer review determines the methodology is flawed and will not deliver what's projected, they would get credit for saving taxpayer dollars that otherwise would be wasted.

Not only that, there are far less expensive alternatives that are environmentally preferred by the federal EPA than a Big City Sewer. Chatham can save tens, probably hundreds, of millions of dollars by integrating such alternatives as cluster systems and permeable reactive barriers into any Chatham solution, assuming the DEP/MEP science is found by peer review to be good and that infrastructure to reduce septic nitrogen will yield the projected improvements.

As for the half billion sewer project itself, as structured by the Big City Sewer specialist Stearns & Wheler, improvements in water quality wouldn't appear (if at all) for at least 23 to 25 years when the system is fully operational. Instead, by proceeding incrementally with targeted "hot spots" such as Oyster Pond with environmentally preferred cluster systems and permeable reactive barriers, improvements may be obtained far sooner, for far less money and with far less disruption to the community life (e.g., without tearing up streets with 20-foot deep cuts). But taxpayers should be satisfied before huge expenditures are made that the science is sound and will accomplish the desired improvements

It's clear that Chatham has to rein in its overspending. The biggest project of all cannot be immune. The wastewater treatment facility should be scaled back as CCT outlined in its letter to the selectmen to accommodate just those 300 or so new properties being added to the existing sewer system. By doing this the town will retain the flexibility to incorporate through adaptive management the kinds of cost-saving strategies outlined here. Otherwise, town voters will be forced by the capacity enlargement the Town Manager has arranged to be completed by mid-2012 into spending about half a billion dollars on a centralized sewer system that is overkill for the job that needs to be done, assuming a peer review shows that there is a job for the town to do to eliminate man-originated septic nitrogen. Any competent professional engineer will say that a plant only operates efficiently at is design capacity. Unless the present WWTF enlargement is limited as described, taxpayers will be forced to vote to add sewer piping to provide the wastewater flow the WWTF needs, whether they want to or not.

CCT's estimate of approximate $450 million for the Big City Sewer is considerably higher than the $266 million the Town Manager asserts the project will cost. His numbers presented at the February 23rd selectmen's meeting and on the town website are vastly understated: He uses an interest rate that is 20% to 40% lower than what is available; he leaves out at least $30 million of operations and maintenance costs during the 20-year construction period and he does not take inflation into account (3% per year is usual) over the construction period. He also ignores the connection costs for property owners forced to connect to the sewer system. See our prior entry for more details.

There is still time to do the sensible thing. It is up to the selectmen. In their hands is the fiscal future of Chatham. They are answerable to the taxpayers. They have an obligation to spend their money wisely. In these demanding times, critical, difficult fiscal decisions cannot be left to the Town Manager.

Now Professor Kotilikoff of Boston University says it's more like $202 trillion. In fact, the U.S. is bankrupt and there are no easy solutions.

The can has been kicked down the road for decades and the vast expansion of spending by the Obama administration has made a bad situation impossible to solve without a great deal of pain and misery. Reality and backbone are lacking in Washington and the nation is likely to continue to hurtle towards an even worse disaster than is forecast now.

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know It Commentary by Laurence Kotlikoff

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.

What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”

But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”

The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.

Double Our Taxes

To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.

Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.

Is the IMF bonkers?

No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.

‘Unofficial’ Liabilities

Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.

For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.

The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.

$4 Trillion Bill

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

Worse Than Greece

Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.

This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.

Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.

My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”

As disturbing as it is to say, it's America. The world's leading financial newspaper published in the U.K. The Financial Times today carries a report of an analysis jointly conducted by American and European economists. If the world thinks Greece is teetering, what must they think when the numbers show the U.S. is in worse condition than Greece? The "gap" between future revenues and the costs and other liabilities that are accruing is huge.

A short time ago the National Review presented findings indicating that the "real" liabilities of the U.S. that will have to be paid now and in the future amount to at least $130-$140 trillion (that's trillions, not billions) dollars, without including the costs of Obamacare. It isn't today's $13 trillion that's troubling, it's the number that is ten times that.

Though the analytic approaches differ, the conclusions are similar. Spending has to be cut drastically at all levels of government, national, state at local. Entitlements have to be reduced or eliminated. There is not enough money to spread around, however one might wish to do just that.

Read this and be very frightened.

You won't feel better after reading the National Review piece, either.

Fiscal conservatives must rally to the call to preserve American as a land of opportunity and promise for our children and grandchildren.

While the national numbers are truly scary, we can't ignore the overspending challenges in Massachusetts and Chatham.

Unfunded pension and health care liabilities and an explosion of health care and Medicaid costs at the state level; unfunded pension and health care liabilities in Chatham and an explosion of debt from about $30 million to $300 million and debt service on the property tax from $2.7 million to $14 million.

There's no room anymore for sweetheart public union contract deals with built-in increases. Spending has to be cut. Government has to be pared down. Just because Chatham has a lot of expensive property that can be taxed doesn't mean the people writing the checks can afford any more extravagant spending.