Bellevue property owners may pay a bit more this year in sewer surcharges, but it won't be as much as it could have been. With two members absent, a hotly divided Bellevue Council voted Tuesday to set a usage based surcharge at $2.25 per 1,000 gallons of water used at a property.

An ordinance adopted in December had set the fee at $3 per 1,000 gallons of water used, but that ordinance was vetoed by Mayor George Doscher shortly after it was approved. Doscher argued that it would be more "compassionate" to increase the fee in stages over a two-year period.

Property owners now pay just over $19 per quarter for the surcharge originally adopted to fund sewer remediation mandated by a federal administrative consent order (ACO). Bellevue officials previously reported that the average water usage per property is 15,000 per quarter, which under a usage-based surcharge of $3 per gallon would cost the property owner $45 per quarter.

Unable to produce the six votes necessary to override the veto, a council majority nonetheless voted in January to start from scratch with the legislation identical to the vetoed ordinance, with the fee set at $3 per 1,000 gallons of water.

That might have set into motion an endless circle of veto and new ordinances, but for the absence at council's regular meeting Tuesday of two members of the council majority: Lisa Blaney-Stewart and Mark Panichella.

That gave the minority group comprised of Linda Woshner, Jane Braunlich, Jim Viscusi and Susan Viscusi the opportunity not only to amend the new ordinance to set the surcharge at $2.25 per 1,000 gallons of water, but to get the ordinance adopted on its third and final reading.

The decision came after extended debate that centered around whether officials believed director of administrative services Doug Sample had padded, or actually underestimated, the borough's sewer-related costs for the coming year.

Braunlich and Woshner said that, using Sample's calculation that a $3 surcharge would produce $585,000 in revenue, a $2 surcharge therefore would produce $390,000. If the calculation is correct, a $2.25 surcharge should net the borough some $438,750, which the council members said was more than enough to cover 2011's sewer costs.

Braunlich said that the borough engineer had submitted an estimate that this year's mandated sewer work would cost $335,000. The surcharge also is expected to cover a portion of Bellevue's bond repayment at a cost of $90,000 per year.

Some council members objected to a $150,000 expenditure included in the sewer budget that represented a transfer to the borough's general fund to cover the cost of the borough renting its own equipment back to itself for sewer work at rates up to $150 per hour.

Sample continued to defend the line item as an accounting measure designed to reflect the borough's actual sewer-related costs, but his argument remained unconvincing to some officials. Accounting and charging taxpayers extra for the equipment are two different things, maintained Woshner.

"We've been paying for it out of the taxes our citizens have been paying," she said.

Council president Kathy Coder and member Mark Helbling, however, said that Bellevue needed to start building a reserve fund because the ACO compliance costs in future years would be even higher. Coder, in fact, challenged Jim and Susan Viscusi to explain their rationale for supporting a lower surcharge given that, she said, they had not attended wet weather meetings and were not aware of the future costs.

No reserve fund for future projects, however, was figured into the sewer budget presented to council.

Doscher said that municipalities were acting out of "fear of the bogeyman" in the form of the state and federal environmental authorities requiring compliance with mandates to eliminate stormwater from sanitary sewer lines because of the overflow problem that has ALCOSAN discharging raw sewage into rivers and streams.

Doscher said that authorities were likely to give Bellevue time to complete the mandated remediation as long as the borough was making adequate progress in the effort.

Solicitor Tom McDermott warned against expecting tolerance from the state and federal governments.

"The bogeyman isn't coming, he's here," McDermott said, noting that the ACO was the result of enforcement action by the EPA and DEP.

"I'm not afraid of the bogeyman," said Braunlich. "I'm afraid of our residents leaving and our businesses leaving."

Sample said that the $3 surcharge was about average based on the fees being charged by other municipalities. Woshner, however, said that Bellevue residents and business owners were already paying more in earned income and business taxes than those in other communities. Bellevue's business privilege tax is twice that of Ross Township's, she said, and residents pay a half percent more in EIT.

Helbling said that the average user of 15,000 gallons of water per quarter would pay only about $8.33 more per month with the $3 surcharge.

That might be true, Woshner said, but what about other users, such as larger families and businesses such as laundromats, restaurants and beauty salons?