Investment fees under scrutiny again

The difficult decisions kept coming for Moorcroft’s council Monday night with the question of applying the existing municipal investment fee ordinance to the mobile home parks and apartment buildings in town.

The council has set a workshop to seek property owners’ opinions Monday night at 6 p.m. before making a decision at the meeting immediately following regarding the direction the town will take.

“As we’re all discussing the hard part of our job,” Mayor Ben Glenn ruefully said to his fellow councilmen, “we have to keep it fair across the board. These investment fees keep sneaking up on us and we’ve dealt with it for a while. The investment fees need to be discussed.”

The council is seeking improvement of the investment fee structure, according to the mayor, “So everyone who owns or rents a lot is paying the same.”

Councilman Austin Smith, himself a homeowner, concurred, “I feel that every resident should have to pay that. I know it’s hard, but we don’t have the option.”

Public Works Director Cory Allison added, “We just spent $3-$4 million on a lagoon out here that we have to pay for and if a trailer park’s not paying, it puts more on you who have houses.”

Admitting that this issue does not affect him as he lives outside of Moorcroft, Allison said, “If I had a house in town and all those guys weren’t [paying] and I was paying the extra from the rates that went up, I’d be a little bit mad about all this.”

“Years ago, the town reached out to me and another property owner,” said Councilman Paul Smoot after listening to the history of this particular problem, “and they said ‘hey, we’re going to be raising some investment fees’, and so I got together with the other property owner; we met with the town and we… came up with an agreement. Is it more expensive – yes, I’m paying more and so is he, but it’s fine because I think it’s fair. Once we’re all paying into the system (and it’s a good system we have) so I think if we could do this with the other trailer park owners… we have people who are just basically taking advantage of the town.”

Bringing this problem further into the light is a situation with which the body has been forced to deal repeatedly to no avail. This specific issue has already led to the council’s approval of the installation of individual meters and has required one property owner to show proof of a contractor schedule for installing new lines for the added meters within the month due to problems with his existing tenant-based utility schedule not working.

A 20-year resident who rents in the township spoke from the tenants’ perspective: “The land owners are trying to make a living, too, and I know some of [them] are barely making it… and they’re trying to make affordable housing for tenants like me who are working at Coffee Cup. So they’re going to make a living and…provide affordable housing for a lot of our elders who only bring in $500-$600 a month on Social Security.”

This argument was, to an extent, invalidated by the original reasoning reiterated by Allison, “But if that elderly person lives in a house, they still have to pay the same water bills everyone else has to, where if they live in a trailer park right now, they don’t.”

The renter then said, “They are paying because it’s incurred in their rent.” This comment, though brought an interesting question: if the property owner is being paid utilities from their tenants, why is the town not receiving this revenue?

The audience member stated that the property owners are, in fact, paying the town. “So when you start [asking] another $500 or $600 [from] that land owner, they’re going to raise the rent for the current tenants so that extra $10 or $20 for that tenant who is only bringing in $500 or $600 a month – it’s certainly going to [come out of] their food.”

Again, the council invites all those interested to attend the discussion at 6 p.m. in council chambers on Monday, June 27.