The cost of the recent expansion of town sewer service has been a hot topic among residents who have to foot the bill. Now, residents of two neighborhoods asking Town Meeting voters to cap their costs at $18,000 per property.

Recent sewering began with the "Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan," completed in 2002, which identified seven "needs areas" that the town should sewer to reduce pollution and otherwise maintain the town's waterways.

Various neighborhoods were bundled under sewer expansion contracts. The fee that each household must pay -- the "betterment fee" -- is calculated by dividing the total cost of a sewer project by the total number of households in the neighborhoods in the contract.

Betterment fees for recent projects have ranged from $12,000 to $17,000 -- a bone of contention for the Oakdale/Cromesett Betterment Association, which argues that the work should not have been divided in the way that it was, and has prepared a Town Meeting article to lower the cost for residents in those neighborhoods.

“If they had done it right the first time we would all be paying $20,000,” said Marilyn Jordan of the Oakdale/Cromesett Betterment Association.

The Finance Committee voted unanimously not to support the article. The town would likely have to absorb the cost of lowering the fee for everyone.

"We all agree an injustice has been done by the former Board of Selectmen, but the town just can’t afford to absorb it," said Finance Committee Chair Donna Bronk, noting that she was only speaking for herself, not on behalf of the entire committee.

The Oakdale and Cromesett neighborhoods were sewered under "Contact 2" of the recent expansion projects. The final cost of the sewering is still being added up, but the residents' betterment -- which they must pay off within 10 years -- is currently estimated $22,000 per home.

The Betterment Association argues that the town violated Massachusetts General Law Chapter 83, Section 15, in dividing the neighborhoods and assessing the fees. The law states: “A uniform unit method shall be based upon sewerage construction costs divided among the total number of existing and potential sewer units to be served.”

“There is no authority for the town to arbitrarily divide the project in to three different segments, particularly when it results in widely divergent betterment assessments with no rational justification," the Betterment Association wrote in its submitted article that appears on the Town Meeting agenda.

Further, Jordan says: “Our contention is the town can go after federal and state grants to offset the costs."

The Oakdale/Cromesett Betterment Association also takes issue with the fact that  an article passed at the 2006 Town Meeting, authorizing $1.5 million for the design of the project, did not inform voters of the price of construction which was estimated at $23.4 million.

The Betterment Association also claims that the same article was voted upon under false pretenses.

The minutes from the 2006 Town Meeting state that a former Selectman said the project was mandated by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The Betterment Association contends that there was never any mandate. Instead, Wareham proposed the project to the DEP, and the project was approved.

Jordan says that the residents of the neighborhoods are not opposed to paying their fair share of the cost of sewer expansion, but feel that the process of dividing the neighborhoods and assessing the fees has left them overcharged.

“We’re all in the same boat, we’re all taxpayers," said Jordan. "It’s one community.”