North Adams Approves Wheel Estates Rent Hike
 Mobile Home Rent Control Board members Joseph Gniadek, left, Paul Senecal and Chairman Wayne Wilkinson; on the table are the park's 2009 receipts. |
Tenants will see an increase of $49 a month, the first rate hike in a decade, beginning in November. The rate will be $254, up from $205, plus $9 in city taxes, for a total of $263 a month.
"It may seem a lot to some but after 10 years it's reasonable," said Chairman Wayne Wilkinson. He said the board would meet with tenants to explain the process if they wished.
The amount was less than a third what park owner Morgan Management had requested last month. The Pittsford, N.Y., company had petitioned for a rate increase of $141 that would have boosted monthly rents to $355 in the 200-lot park. The hike does give the company a 4.75 percent rate of return, after the board approved a 1.5 percent increase over the prime rate of 3.25.
More than two dozen park residents filled the seats in the City Council chambers as the board spent more than two hours minutely scrutinizing the park's costs and revenues to come up with a reasonable fee. Morgan's representatives — Chief Financial Officer Larry Hill, park managers Richard and Kim Purcelli and attorney Joseph E. Kelleher of Kraus & Hummel — were quizzed on line items ranging from street plowing to lifeguards.
There were occasional kerfuffles — the board, for instance balked at accepting nearly $12,000 in legal costs that were also marked on the company's federal tax forms. Morgan representatives said the costs were incurred in evictions because tenants had to be taken to Housing Court.
"These people should not be paying legal expenses to remove other people from the park," said board member Joseph Gniadek, motioning to the filled seats. Wilkinson described it at "taking two bites out of same the apple."
They also questioned some $2,000 in gas fillups outside of North Adams (mostly in Cheshire, which raised the board's suspicion about charges from Morgan's Pine Valley Mobile Home Community there, but others in Ludlow, Wilbraham and Gardner) and a $2,000 bill to take down a tree for a new mobile home to placed.
Morgan won the legal expenses on safety grounds by noting one of the tenants removed was involved in a fatal stabbing, and the gas (for travel to courts and Home Depot in Pittsfield) but lost a battle to count the tree removal costs.
"How does the entire park benefit by it?" was the criteria set by Gniadek, who said he spent 130 hours digging into Morgan's 2009 receipts in two giant file notebooks.
 More than two dozen park residents attended the meeting. |
"In 2009, there was no city sewer tax but it is happening ... I just don't see that you people should have to sit here and eat that tax," said Gniadek to Morgan's representatives. "My proposal is I would give your 42 percent of the $64,304 (calculated as 90 percent of the water bill) - that would be $27,900."
Each expense item approved by the board was placed against the park's profit margin. Wilkinson suggested a 1 percent return over the prime rate of 3.25; Morgan had asked for 2.
"We can give them zero," said Wilkinson. "I would look at zero being a terrible job and 2 percent being a great job. They're trying up there and I think they're doing an average job."
Hill said that wasn't fair. "The first time you gave to it [former owner] Fusco it was 1.25 percent and they were doing a terrible job."
Morgan also owns The Spruces in Williamstown and has requested a rate hike of $215 there. The Williamstown Mobile Home Rent Control Board will meet Monday, Sept. 20 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall.
