Gainesville / Braselton to partner on sewer / water

GAINESVILLE – The City of Braselton has asked the City of Gainesville to partner with them to simplify and create enforcement leverage in the billing of water and sewer services for their citizens who live in the Hall County portion of the municipality that straddles four counties.

Braselton city limits extend from Hall County into Jackson, Gwinnett, and Barrow Counties.

Assistant Public Utilities Director Don Dye told the Gainesville City Council Thursday morning, “There are several hundred parcels that are served water by Gainesville but provided sewer service by Braselton. The problem Braselton's having is people will sign up for City of Gainesville water and they will receive sanitary sewer services from Braselton.”

“But Braselton has no way to force the customers to pay sewer their charges,” Dye added. Those same customers must pay their Gainesville water charges, as Dye explains, “because we can cut their water off and penalize (them); Braselton doesn't have that leverage.”

City Manager Kip Padgett was asked if non-payment of sewer billings was a chronic problem being experienced by Braselton. While he did defer that answer to Braselton authorities, Padgett said that he was not aware of such a situation being a major issue at the moment.

Padgett said, “We're already billing the water customers; Braselton approached us to see if we could just help them out and bill the sewer customers. It allows their customers to have a one-stop-shop with us.”

Dye went on to explain the arrangement the intergovernmental agreement would create.

“We will be billing them sewer services. Their water and sewer services will be charged by the City of Gainesville, collected by the City of Gainesville, and we will remit those quarterly to Braselton minus three percent,” Dye said.

Dye submitted to the Council a list of 188 customers that would immediately become a part of the services provided by Gainesville.

“It's fairly minimal work on our part to remit those payments to Braselton,” Dye said, and then added, “There is a side deal to this.”

“The hospital that they're constructing in south Hall, in Braselton, is going to be using a lot of water, which means a lot of sewer is going to be going to Braselton....so we capped that one customer...in exchange for (Braselton allowing) Gainesville to put an antenna on their tank...so we can read all the meters in south Hall,” Dye said.

“Really, it's a win-win,” Dye said smiling broadly.

Padgett nodded, “This is a good agreement for helping each other out.”

Final approval for the agreement will be voted on Tuesday evening.