Waterbury evening Democrat., 1895-05-03
HIGH WATER RENTS.

A Business Man COmplaInat That He
 Pays a Higher Rate Than HIs Neigh
 bors and Wants to Know the Reason
 Why.
 The item in last nights DEMOCRAT re- lative to Kelly the baker charging Ave cents glass for water has occasioned con- siderable talk and Mir Kelly himself came forward today to defend the statement. He said: ''Yesterday morning received a bill of S69 for water rent at my Bank street block. called at the office of the water board and enquired why the bill was so large, especially for the winter months. There are only seventeen persons in the building and I think that $69 would more than pSy for AS much milk as these people used for the last six months, SC you see the clerk made no mistake when she said that water was dearer than milk. The only explanation I could get at the office was that there was a meter in the block. l asked how much my bill would be if there was DO meter there and after figuring up the regular rates charged to people having no meter in their houses, I was informed that without the meter my water rent would be but $40 year. and there was with bill of $69 in my hand for six | months. If this Is not downright robbery I'd like to know what you would call it. If a man has block with five or six tenants living in it why should his water rent be | almost four times as much as that of the | man who owns five or six houses of two or three tenements each? Why should I be obliged to pay four times a: much for the water my tenants use as the man who lives across the street? If yoJ put a meter in every house aud make al | pay for water ln proportion to the amount they use. why all right. Then we vii pay of our water debt in a few years aud We can have it for little or nothing afte r wards. I know people waste water in stores and tenementS, but why should some peopl, be charged for the water their tenants waste while others are taxed only for wha a family or store is supposed to use. tel you the time is coming when We will de mand that what We have paid over and abov other people be paid back to us. It is un just and we have better right to get bacl our money than the peddlers who paid fo a license to do business here and after wards found out that such tax was file gal"
 Mir Kelly holds that the system of dls posing of water to the people is decidedl, unfair to large number of property own CTS. Some are getting it at a reasonabl rate while others are taxed a very higl sum.
 Ia conversation with another prominen citizen the reporter was informed that man who had worked in the water buSi ness in this and other cities told him tha water costs more than twice AS much il Waterbury as it does in Albany and othe cities where he had worked. The who'll trouble here seems to arise from the fac that there is nothing like an equalization of rates. and on this account many peopl are paying a great deal more than thei share of the expense. Some might sup pose that this affects no one except thost who are settling the bills. It does The owners of stores and terements tr, to get this back in rents and in the sam manner the storekeeper must charge little more than he wants to for his good
 in order to meet the high rent. so that il the end all the expense falls back upol the poor man. Il believe it will b always so. The common people are rarel ever thought of in connection with thes matters. and yet iu nine cases out of tel they bear the heaviest part of the bul den"