BSU offers Bonita Springs Golf & Country Club residents a year of interest-free payments

Wednesday, 06 July 2011 13:23 |

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. (July 6, 2011) – Bonita Springs Utilities is offering residents of Bonita Springs Golf & Country Club and the Sandy Hollow area the option of monthly payments with no interest for one year on a special service charge. The charge, approved by Bonita Springs City Council June 1, will help the utility to recoup the costs of upgrading the community’s sewer system.

Property owners will pay the special service charge to cover infrastructure improvements made after BSU purchased the sewer system in 2003. BSU is offering a monthly payment option for the special service charge interest-free for the first year and at 6 percent annually for the remaining balance. There is no penalty for paying the charge early, and customers can make extra payments toward the principal to shorten the term of the payments.

“Our board of directors has taken this action to make it easier for property owners to handle the charge,” said BSU Executive Director Fred Partin. “Charging no interest for a year means the entire payment applies to the principal, shortening the length of time it will take to pay off the special service charge.”

BSU is sending letters to residents in the area to provide information about the charge, timing and steps for arranging payments.

The special service charge is $3,365 for single-family homes and $2,692 for condominiums and other multi-family homes. Monthly payments will be $21.68 for each single-family home and $17.34 per multi-home unit. Homes built between Jan. 17, 2003, and June 1, 2011, will be exempt from the special service charge, because they paid Aid to New Construction fees to the utility when they connected to the central sewer system.

The Bonita Springs Golf & Country Club sewer system and wastewater-treatment plant were originally built and operated by the community’s developer. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection had issued numerous corrective actions, and the bank holding the mortgage had foreclosed on it when BSU purchased the system. During the following two years, BSU invested more than $3.6 million to demolish the wastewater plant, route wastewater flows to BSU’s central water-treatment plants and bring the system into compliance to reduce the likelihood of environmental damage.

Bonita Springs Utilities is a not-for-profit water and wastewater utility founded by local citizens in 1971. Today, the member-owned utility serves more than 40,000 homes and businesses in a 60-square-mile area. For more information, visit the BSU website at www.BSU.us.