At the August 18th Town Council meeting for the Town of Christiansburg, there was an amendment to Chapter 29 of the Town Code: Water and Sewer. I was wondering why an ordinance change would occur without there being a Public Hearing, so I asked. In response to my question, Councilman Wade asked the Town Manager about this during the course of the meeting. The response was essentially that it was only minor changes concerning updating some definitions and removing the fees for services from the Town Code as those were being included into a fees book that would be kept at Town Hall as a separate document. Assurances were given that any rate changes that occurred would still require public hearings and Council approval. Sounds pretty good, eh? Well, I am still working on a line-by-line comparison with the older version of that Code section and I am only half-way through it. Thus far, I have 12 pages of notes on the changes that were made (single spaced, 10 pt. type). I may just be that I don’t have the wealth of knowledge at hand to see it, but these do not all look like simple changes. It almost gives the impression (to the uninformed viewer such as myself) that there is something going on in the background. The two most likely options that I am looking for are: 1. By getting the fees and rates moved to another document, they will no longer be online and accessible to the public in an easily accessible form. Despite the fact that current residents will be informed of changes, this removes the possibility that people or businesses considering moving here can quickly look at these. Perhaps the Town will post this Fees manual on the Town’s website? 2. There were a lot of things in the old version of the Code that were seriously out of date and this was a rush job to bring everything up to date. Stands to reason that given the Town’s recent problems with Sewer and Stormwater issues, they would be trying to get everything revised as quickly as possible. There are also a lot of changes relating to additions concerning penalties for late payment, etc. This is good in that it removes a lot of the ambiguity in the previous code, but bad in that where people have had patterns of behavior that have been ignored previously, there is now the legal basis for service discontinuance, late fees, and extra charges that they may not be accustomed to dealing with. The wording also attaches the concept of family to the enforcement issue such that where people may have previously simply changed the name holder of the account when they moved to avoid paying bills, it will now be based upon all family members in the domicile. This is good for insuring that everyone pays their fair share, I’m all for that. However, the fact that it was done, without there being any education of the public on the matter such as would be done through Public Hearings, may have set up a lot of people who have used this in the past and are now using it again to be caught in a ‘gotcha’ situation. I am all for making sure that everyone pays. I am all for collecting late fees and enforcing bill payment. I am NOT for doing it is sneaky ways that leave people unprepared/uneducated. Changing the Code without giving people the opportunity to learn about it just does not seem right to me. People should be educated and informed on all changes to Codes whenever possible. Then, if they want to do something dumb like break the law, so be it. Keep it open, keep it straightforward, then there is no way for violators to say ‘they didn’t know’. I don’t know what all else will come out of this review, but there are a lot of pages that have been added overall. Count on a comparative document being on the MyVAResources.com website (and announced here) when it is finished.
