Three homeowners who appealed their charges for septic system upgrades have agreed to a negotiated settlement with the town that ends the dispute.

The assessments they appealed were adopted by the town’s Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) in January 2014. In a unanimous decision, the WPCA had voted to levy individual benefit assessments (bills) on each of the 220 homeowners in the first group whose septic system upgrades were completed.

The hard costs benefit assessments (bill for labor and materials} approved for each property and owner in the first group was 50 percent of the total cost for the site-specific installation. Benefit assessments were only levied on those owners who opted to accept Clean Water Funds to offset the cost of the septic upgrade. With this acceptance, the total installation cost would be shared with the owner paying 50 percent of the cost, the town 25 percent, and a Clean Water Fund grant, the remaining 25 percent.

Under the terms of the WPCA and Clean Water Fund program, the homeowner pays his or her 50 percent divided over 20 years of payments of principal and interest. The interest rate charged on the Clean Water Fund loans is two percent.

Homeowners in the wastewater management district choosing to challenge the amount of their site-specific benefit assessment had to go to court. Six of the initial group of 220 homeowners decided to challenge their benefit assessments in a court appeal.

One homeowner withdrew the initial appeal early in 2014. Two other homeowners withdrew their appeals more recently. That left just three homeowners remaining in the court appeals process. It’s with these three owners that the town reached a negotiated settlement.

With last week’s Board of Selectmen vote, the terms of the settlement were announced publicly: Each of the three remaining homeowners in the court appeal process would receive a single payment from the town. However, the town made no other promises or concessions in the deal. Each of the parties—both the town and the homeowner challengers—must bear the full costs of their respective legal charges incurred as a result of the appeals process.

In the settlement, the town agreed to make a specific financial payment to each of the three owners: Kathryn Ring of 9 South View Circle will receive $2,000; Richard Swan of 3 South View Circle will get $3,000; and John and Judith Fabiola of 15 Maynard Circle will receive $4,000.

“Each of these [cases] are reasonably special circumstances,” said First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr. “The payments are lump-sum payments to settle. They do not change the benefit assessments that were adopted by the WPCA” for each property, said Fortuna.

“It was a settlement, so neither party was completely satisfied, but there is no doubt now that the town is on solid legal ground with the WPCA program,” Fortuna said.

The resolution adopted by the Board of Selectmen makes the settlement approval and payments to be made contingent on each of the homeowners signing a legal release.