MECHANIC FALLS — The Town Council wants a face-to-face meeting with Mechanic Falls Sanitary District officials to resolve a difference of opinion over what the town is being charged.

“The problem isn’t going to go away and if it isn’t fixed, it’s just going to cost the townspeople,” Councilor Bob Small said.

The issue arose a month ago when the town received a $7,500 bill for the first quarter. Town officials believed the bill lacked clarity and probably included unwarranted charges.

The Council asked Town Manager John Hawley to request that the Sanitary District itemize the quarterly bill.

“I sent a letter asking for an itemized bill and received a bill that was $3,000 more than the last one, but still no itemization,” Hawley said.

Hawley added that apparently the bill, as the Sanitary District figured it, should have been $10,500 and that he recently received a letter from an engineering firm that assists the district that, while not detailed, explained how the $10,500 was arrived at.

Hawley reported that it appeared the district was measuring all the water that passed through the treatment plant, subtracted out the water that could be charged to to the system’s other users and billed the town for the rest.

A considerable amount of the water that the town is being charged to treat is storm water runoff that goes into catch basins.

In recent years the plumbing for many of the catch basins has been altered, redirecting some of the water away from the treatment plant.

Councilors said they expected to see some reduction in what the town was being charged, but that hasn’t happened.

Councilor Roger Guptill further noted that a fair number of the catch basins that are still connected to the treatment plant are the responsibility of the Maine Department of Transportation and wondered if DOT was being billed.

Hawley said that as far as he knew, DOT flatly refused to pay, and the district had given up on trying to collect from them.

That meant, Guptill pointed out, that the district must be charging the town for water going to the treatment plant through the DOT catch basins.

Hawley was directed to contact Sanitary District officials to set up a meeting to resolve the matter.

In other business, the council, noting that there has been an uptick in inquiries regarding medical marijuana clinics and smoke shops with adult items, approved a six-month moratorium on the development of such activity.

The council also authorized Hawley to seek DOT permission to lower the speed limit on a portion of North Street from 35 to 25 mph, adopted an ordinance that allows residents to participate in Efficiency Maine’s low-interest energy improvement loan program and turned down a request from the town of Poland to landfill their wood-chip pile.