9 October—The latest on the Litchfield sewer tax—whoops, the sewer use fee—is that it’s no longer collected by the Litchfield tax collector. It seems that was a one-year experiment. The dirty is now done by a contractor doing it for the Sewer Commission—sorry, the Water Pollution Control Authority—but neither employed by the town nor elected by the town’s voters.

(The tax collector, town clerk, and town treasurer shouldn’t be elective positions. But that’s another story.)

The WPCA tax collector’s recent arrival on the job accounts for the late bills this year, but not for our neighbor’s problems with billing for a non-existent sewer connection and its aftermath. While the contractor is new to the job collecting Litchfield sewer tax from about 1,300 lucky WPCA customers, the software she uses is the same QDS (Quality Data Services) program used by the Tax Collector.

And therein must lie the problem: The QDS software gets its data from the town assessor’s software and does what it’s supposed to do with tax on real estate and other taxable property. But, as far as we can determine (not knowing anything about coding), it hasn’t been (properly or at least sufficiently) tweaked to adapt—filter—the assessor’s data just for actual sewer connections.

There are also some other glitches, like some sewer customers not having been billed for the first time ever and incorrect addresses on bills. But those may be no more than teething problems. And by Connecticut statute, payment for sewer use fees is due even if a bill isn’t received or even rendered. Just like property tax. Too bad.

The good news is, with the alacritous assistance of WPCA Plant Superintendent Ted Donoghue (serving above and beyond, as usual), our neighbor’s billing problem is no longer a problem. The records have been corrected, payments recorded, interest canceled, and all is right with the world.

With the 2024 sewer use bill, anyway. What did Brooklyn Dodgers fans say?

🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️

Apropos nothing, a begging letter from the ACLU, rescued from you know where, is signed “Anthony D. Romero (he, him, his), Executive Director.”

Jesus Christ! (He, Him, His) . . .