Taneytown Charrette

Taneytown, Carroll County Maryland

Population: FY'93 Budget: Households: Assessable Base: Median Household Income:

3,695 $1,007,700 1,363 $42,271,346 ?

Town Background

Taneytown, Maryland is a small historic town located in north-central Maryland, just five miles from the Pennsylvania border. The town is well connected by state highways to a number of large urban centers: it is 23 miles from Frederick, Maryland, 35 from Baltimore, and 60 miles from Washington, D.C.

By the mid-eighteenth century, major transportation routes, including the nearby Monocacy River, brought many travelers to the area. Taneytown's location on these major travel routes necessitated the development of travel services, such as inns and taverns and hence the development of a town center. According to a brass plaque on Frederick Street, in 1791 both George and Martha Washington stayed in Taneytown's Adam Good Tavern, which according to a sign that marked the tavern read "A dam Good Inn, entertainment for man and beast"--they decided to spend the night and were supposed to have eaten "mush and milk" for supper.

By the late 1790s, Taneytown supported a variety of manufacturing industries: bricks, clocks, pottery, furniture, tin and threshing machines and other farm implements to name just a few. There was a cigar factory and a plant that manufactured firearms used to fight the "redcoats".

As with many other small towns, the building of the railroad in 1871 through Taneytown gave great impetus to its development. Later the route was extended to Frederick. By 1948, however, with the introduction of more efficient highway routes, all passenger service was eliminated--only freight remained.

Today, Taneytown's proximity to Baltimore, Frederick and the Washington, D.C. area has made Taneytown something of a "bedroom community" with most working residents commuting to large employment centers outside of town. The town is surrounded by agriculture, but supports some in-town employment. The largest in-town employers are Ingersoll-Dresser, an industrial pumping firm (224 employees) and the Taney Corporation, manufacturers of wood stairs (220 employees). The tax base is 63% residential, 17% commercial and 20% industrial.

The Issue

Taneytown has enjoyed steady growth throughout most of its history. With a current population of 3,695, the area could support a total population of 8,226 with "total build-out" resulting in an additional 1800 housing units. According to the Maryland Office of Planning, the town currently has 1,363 housing units, of which 1,303 were occupied, leaving a negligible vacancy rate of 0.8% of owner occupied homes. The majority of the homes are detached single family dwellings, with some townhouses and duplexes. There are very few multifamily dwellings and only 15 mobile homes. The median value of a home is $84,600.

The problem is Taneytown has experienced a boom in housing development, with an 88.5% increase in housing permits awarded between 1991 and 1992. Currently there are 140 new units already approved, pending financing, and developers have four new projects in the design stages which will total between 600-700 new housing units in the coming years. This boom has created something of a crisis with respect to upgrading the capacity of the City's wastewater treatment facilities.

According to the town's historical documents, the issue of adequate sewage treatment has continuously haunted local officials. It wasn't until 1952 that a Federal loan was obtained to plan and build a complete sewer system and treatment plant. In 1954, $625,000 in forty year bonds were issued to finance the system. In 1972, additional water mains were added and the treatment plant was enlarged and modernized. This was largely financed with Federal and State grants.

Sewer hook-up fees are $600, which is low for Maryland and for a town like Taneytown. Additionally, the town does not differentiate between rates charged residential units and those charged commercial units.

Environmental Context

The sewage treatment plant in Taneytown was designed for 700,000 gallons per day (gpd). During dry weather, flows are around 325,000 but during long periods of wet weather, flows rise in excess of 2 million gpd, more than a seven-fold increase over dry weather flows and roughly three times the capacity of the plant. The problems is due to "inflow and infiltration", or I &I. Flows to the treatment plant increase within 45 minutes to an hour after a storm, which is a symptom of an inflow problem (flows into the sewer treatment plant increase dramatically over a short period of time). But the problem usually remains for 3 to 4 days, which is a sign of infiltration (seepage of storm water into the pipes themselves from the surrounding soil).

Given that the system was largely built in 1954 with clay pipes, an investigation was conducted which yielded a diagnosis of substandard pipes and joints, large cracks penetrated by roots and deteriorating manholes. Some of the supports are not only failing to keep storm water out, but they are so weak that they are suspected of allowing raw, untreated sewage to leak out.

Some elected officials in town have suggested simply expanding the wastewater treatment plant's capacity to address the maximum flows issue. The town manager believes this would be highly inefficient, since the problem is due to excessive I&I from stormwater. If the infrastructure were repaired, about 40% of the I&I problem could be eliminated, which would free up an average of 100,000 gpd of capacity. This translates into sufficient capacity for as many as 300-500 new homes to be built.

Project Financing

An upgrade of Taneytown's sewer pipes will cost $1.5 million. The town's elected officials are attracted to a piecemeal approach and have divided the project into three parts--an initial phase one that would cost $577,000, followed by two more phases at $536,000 and $464,000 each. The problem with this approach is that the same streets would need to be torn open two and three times. Moreover, there are a number of severe engineering problems associated with a sewer renovation of a municipality the age of Taneytown. As described by the town manager: "... some of the houses ...are built in such a way that the foundation is literally built right next to the edge of the sidewalk. You've got a four-foot wide sidewalk here and a house foundation. You bring in the contractor, remove the sidewalk, dig down 6, 7, 8 feet to the sewer line [you're] also going to disturb some of the foundation of the house. I've talked to several contractors and they've said if that's the situation, they are not even going to get involved with the city. Or if they do get involved, the prices would be so high that we couldn't even touch it."

Recommendations and Observations

1. Develop a capital plan and budget--storm water permitting issues and drinking water treatment concerns are right around the corner. By developing a plan, a new rate structure can begin to capture some of these future costs now.

2. Institute a minimum charge for all residents, for water and sewer. Build into the rate a fixed charge for basic administrative and debt service costs, and then allow for a variable portion which would be based on usage. Institute separate rates for commercial, industrial and residential users, with higher rates for commercial and industrial.

3. Use a developer's crews to do most of the digging work for the pipe repair in lieu of an impact fee which would be charged to the developer.

4. Charge developers a capacity reservation fee which would guaranty available capacity in the waste treatment plant for future developments.