CORTLAND Officials: city has overpaid sewer costs

The sanitary engineer is not convinced that Cortland's payments were wrong.
CORTLAND -- City officials say a 20-year-old clerical error may have resulted in the city's overpaying $260,000 for a sewer line to a treatment plant in Bazetta.
The line serves city residents and users of the Trumbull County sanitary system in Howland and Bazetta. The city and county were to each make payments on the $3 million line, based on population, according to a contract signed in 1983.
After reviewing the original contract, Paul Makosky, Cortland's director of public service, concluded that the cost-sharing percentages for city and county had been inadvertently reversed.
Under the initial contract, when bills for the 25-year bond came in, one entity was to come up with 43.6 percent of the cost, the other with the remaining 56.4 percent.
Makosky says Cortland has been paying the larger figure, while it should have been paying the smaller.
If this is the case, payments the city has been making for $35,855 every six months for the last 16 years should have been for only $27,717, he said.
The difference would have been made up by the county.
"I just think a mistake happened 20 years ago and it just wasn't noticed for a number of years," Makosky said. "It is a matter the county should look into and try to get resolved."
County official's response
Thomas Holloway, the county sanitary engineer, said he is not convinced that there was a mistake. He is reviewing the contract, along with the 2000 census data on which the division of costs was based.
Although the original contract for the project was signed before 2000, costs were apportioned based on projected population for that year, he said.