The City of Gardiner meters the volumes from each Town and bills each municipality accordingly. In turn, the Town Office mails out quarterly bills around the 15th of March, June, September, and December. These bills are calculated using the "cubic feet" of water used by each household during the previous quarter from the Gardiner Water District. Bills are due 30 days after the bills are printed. A $5.00 late fee is applied after the 30 days.
On your bill, you will see "HCF" which is "hundred cubic feet". One HCF = 748 gallons. So, if you used 10 HCF, then you used 7,480 gallons in that quarter which is about 83 gallons per day.
The following is a history of the "HCF rate" in Randolph which equates to the cost of treating 748 gallons of waste:
$5.00 -- May 2014 to now
$4.32 -- March 13 to May 14
$3.32 -- June 07 to March 13
$3.12 -- Dec 04 to June 07
$3.03 -- Dec 03 to Dec 04
$2.94 -- Dec 02 to Dec 03
$2.35 -- Mar 97 to Dec 02
$1.95 -- Mar 95 to Mar 97
$1.70 -- Jan 95 to Mar 95
$1.60 -- Jan 94 to Dec 94
$1.40 -- 1991 to Dec 93
Minimum charge per quarter is $31.01. In Gardiner, the charge is $75.30.
Rates for sewer system usage in Randolph were raised by the Selectboard in May 2014 from $28.31 to $31.01. They had previously been adjusted in March 2013 after a public hearing on March 5. The primary factor that caused this increase:
- Gardiner Treatment plant costs have increased beyond our revenue raised, and
- the Town has NO surplus in the account to pay for operational costs
The base charge for all accounts is $31.01 per quarter. The current rate of usage is $5.00 per hundred cubic feet (HCF). As an example, if a home uses 10 HCF, then the bill would be $31.01 + $50.00 or $81.01. The majority of users in Randolph use between 10 and 20 HCF every 3 months.
For comparison purposes, the rates for Farmingdale and Gardiner are as follows:
Farmingdale: HCF rate is $3.40 and minimum charge is $43.26; therefore a house using 10 HCF would pay $77.26.
Gardiner: HCF rate is $1.91 and minimum charge is $75.30; therefore a house using 10 HCF would pay $94.40.
As a historical note, all users saw an across-the-board increase in June 2007 after a public hearing on April 24, 07. An increase of $10 per account happened in December 2006. Previous to that, it was in December 2004, that the HCF rate increased to $3.12.
The late fee for overdue bills also went up from $2 to $5 starting in June 07.