Dear Editor:
I have been a resident of the Exchange luxury apartments since 2008. Recently we were informed that there is a modification to our existing lease agreement which states that each tenant will now be responsible for paying the water and sewer charges for our units. I have just recently received my bill for October and find that the water usage charge is $37 for the month and sewer charges were $9.96 for the month.
Being a previous homeowner, with three individuals in the house and doing wash everyday, my water bill was approximately $78 per quarter. So seeing this water bill for such a large amount for a month, I started to inquire as to why now we as tenants were responsible for water usage and how did they arrive at such an amount. Management was unresponsive to my inquiries.
In an attempt to understand this bill they provided us with a letter from a third party vendor that was hired by management to collect these water and sewer payments. This letter attempted to explain the “formula.” Unfortunately, in looking at my bill they didn’t provide the necessary information to see if the calculation was correct. It did not provide the total water consumption nor the amount of common area water usage that is used by the complex. It just said how much I owed for the month.
I think a much more detailed billing showing all the information necessary should be provided to each tenant so that we may understand better what our responsibility is.
I would like to bring up two more points that are disturbing to me. I was told that the affordable units were told by the Secaucus Housing Authority that they are not to pay the water bills based on the affordable agreement that they have with Exchange. My question is, who is paying their share of the water bill? Is it Exchange or is it the rest of the tenants? My other question is that is my understanding that the sewerage charges are part of the total property taxes that Exchange pays and does so through our rent. Why are we being billed for sewerage, if that is the case? As you can see, there seems to be more questions than answers and hopefully the answers will come soon for all of us at the Exchange.
Leo Rossano