The Town of Elbridge published a notice in July that almost nobody reads, and it contains a level of detail most towns never put in front of residents at all.

It lists, district by district, who pays for a $848,000 water project.

The town board held the public hearing on August 6 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 5 Route 31 in Jordan. The notice is dated July 16 and signed by Town Clerk Patricia Cooper.

### What is being built

Three things, under Town Law Section 202-b as a joint increase and improvement of facilities.

The existing 220,000 gallon Jordan Road water storage tank comes out, replaced by a new 94,000 gallon tank.

The existing 10 inch transmission main is replaced with 1,450 linear feet of 12 inch high density polyethylene main along Jordan Road, between State Route 5 and the Jordan Road tank.

And 2,200 linear feet of new 6 inch main goes in to loop the system, between McCallum Road and Meadow Road and between Meadow Lane and May Road.

The maximum estimated cost is $848,000. The notice records the work as a Type I action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, already determined not to result in any significant adverse environmental effects.

### The tank is getting smaller, and the notice does not say why

The most striking line in the document is the one people are least likely to ask about.

Elbridge is replacing a 220,000 gallon tank with a 94,000 gallon tank. That is 126,000 gallons less, a reduction of about 57 percent.

The notice offers no explanation, and CNY Signal is not going to invent one. It is worth saying plainly that a smaller tank is not automatically a downgrade, and there are ordinary engineering reasons a system gets right sized.

An oversized tank holds water longer. Water that sits loses disinfectant residual and can pick up taste, odor and disinfection byproduct problems, which is a recognized issue in small systems where consumption never turns the tank over. Storage is also sized against real demand and fire flow requirements, and a tank built for a population or an industrial customer that never arrived can end up far larger than the system it serves.

Whether any of that applies here is a question for the town’s engineer. The notice says a map, plan and report prepared by a licensed engineer, along with SEQRA compliance materials, are available for inspection at the Office of the Town Clerk during normal business hours. That document would answer it.

### Nine districts, and they do not pay alike

This is where the notice becomes unusually transparent.

The cost is apportioned across nine separate water districts, and the notice prints each share. Jordan Permissive Service Area carries $347,500, which is 41 percent of the total and by far the largest share. Route 5 East carries $114,750. Champions carries $107,250. Hartlot Road carries $85,000, Elbridge Permissive $83,000, West Elbridge $79,500, Sandbank Road $21,000, Crossett Road No. 1 $5,500 and Crossett Road No. 2 $4,500.

CNY Signal added the nine figures. They come to exactly $848,000, matching the stated maximum to the dollar.

The notice also does something that will matter more to individual property owners than the totals do. It splits the districts into two groups that are assessed on different bases.

For six districts, Jordan Permissive, Elbridge Permissive, Champions, Route 5 East, Sandbank Road and West Elbridge, the cost is assessed on each parcel “in just proportion to the amount of benefit conferred upon the same.”

For the other three, Crossett Road No. 1, Crossett Road No. 2 and Hartlot Road, the cost is assessed “upon an ad valorem basis.”

Those are not the same thing. A benefit assessment tries to charge parcels according to how much the improvement actually helps them. An ad valorem assessment charges according to assessed property value. Two neighbors with identical water service can pay quite different amounts depending on which method governs their district, and a higher assessed home in an ad valorem district pays more regardless of how much water it uses.

The notice does not explain why the districts are divided this way, and the split does not track the size of the shares. Hartlot Road is the fourth largest contributor at $85,000 and is assessed ad valorem. Sandbank Road pays a quarter of that and is assessed on benefit.

### A drafting error in the largest line

One line in the notice does not agree with itself.

The Jordan Permissive Service Area share is written out as “Three Hundred Forty Seven Thousand and 00/100 Dollars,” followed by the numerals “($347,500.00).”

Written words say $347,000. The numerals say $347,500. They are $500 apart, in the single largest apportionment in the document.

The numerals are the ones that work. Using $347,500, the nine shares total exactly $848,000. Using the written words, they total $847,500, which is $500 short of the maximum cost the same notice states twice.

This is almost certainly a typographical slip, a missing “Five Hundred” in the spelled out figure. It is also the kind of thing that matters in a bond document, because legal drafting convention generally gives written words precedence over numerals when the two conflict. Here the words are the version that does not reconcile.

The same notice contains a second, smaller slip, naming “Crossett Rod Water District No. 2” in one place.

Neither error changes what the town is building or what it will cost. Both are worth the town clerk’s attention before the figures are carried into a bond resolution.

### What we could not establish

CNY Signal has not spoken with the Town of Elbridge, and nothing here should be read as its comment.

The hearing was held on August 6. Public hearing notices record what a board intends to consider, not what it decided, and CNY Signal could not locate published minutes or a bond resolution showing whether the town board voted to proceed afterward. That vote, if it happened, is the step that authorizes the borrowing.

We also could not establish why the replacement tank is smaller, what the current condition of the existing tank is, or how the nine district shares were calculated. The engineer’s map, plan and report on file with the town clerk should answer all three.

Elbridge town records are held at Town Hall, 5 Route 31 in Jordan.

For a town of this size to publish a district by district breakdown at all is more disclosure than most residents get on a public works bond. The numbers add up. One of the sentences describing them does not.