How St. Marys "tap fees" are actually calculated.

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As you can see from the instructions above, St. Marys actually calls their fees for hooking up to city water and sewer "aid-to-construction" fees, but they are commonly referred to as tap fees. Let's cut to the chase and go directly to how the tap fee for the new Catholic church was calculated. First, you need to know that the city's "estimated construction cost per gallon" (see definition above) for 2009 is $11.70 per gallon. Now, find "Church" in Table 98-57.1, above. You will see that for a church, the estimated "Water Usage In Gallons Per Day" is 3 gallons per day per seat. The church will seat 672 when finished. Therefor, the calculation is: 3 gallons per seat per day X 672 seats X $11.70 per gallon = a tap fee of $23,587.20. Note also that the rate for an "assembly hall" (the Fraternal Order of Eagles comes to mind) is the same exact 3 gallons per seat per day. Are they picking on churches, as Kingfish Feller, Man-of-the-People, suggests in a transparent effort to secure the votes of his fellow parishioners at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church for whatever he'll run for next? Well, go to the aforementioned table and look at all of the other types of structures which are rated on a "per seat" basis. Under cafeteria (think Aunt B's) for instance, the fee is based on 35 gallons per day per seat. In point of fact, of all structures based on the number of seats, churches are at the very LOWEST rate. While all of Kingfish' empathetic bleatings may appear well founded at first blush, upon closer inspection, they are quite often self serving malarkey and boob bait for bubbas which do not pass the sniff test upon close inspection. But, he apparently thinks there are enough gullible boobs out there to warrant keeping it up.