Allenstown voters will once again consider spending tax dollars to improve its sewer plant.

Public meetings regarding a $15 million bond to expand the Suncook Wastewater Treatment Facility will continue after Allenstown selectmen and Budget Committee members put their stamp of approval on the drafted warrant article for the 2008 Town Meeting.

“It’s really a Catch 22, said Selectman Tom Gilligan, because the sewer expansion would end the block on hookups, bringing more development into town and thus expanding the tax base, he said.

“The town needs the revenue, but nobody wants to be hit with the full price tag,” Gilligan said, adding the natural increase of labor and raw materials as time goes on will only make the burden heavier.

The expansion has been a point of contention since the state Department of Environmental Services issued a moratorium on the plant in 2004, barring any additional sewer hookups to the plant.

Michael Trainque of Hoyle, Tanner and Associates, the engineering firm working on the expansion project, said the expansion is critical, with a water quality study on the Merrimack River currently in the works that may put more stringent requirements for water treatment in place.

“This is actually voting for the future. It’s for the next generation,” said Sewer Commissioner James Rodger at a public meeting at the Parish Hall in Allenstown on Monday, Jan. 7.

The problem, town officials said, is where to place the burden of the proposed 30-year bond.

While Pembroke residents – as a group, the plant’s largest user, accounting for over half of the plant’s flow – will pay 52 percent of the bond, the remaining $7.2 million that will rest with Allenstown taxpayers is still a sizeable cost and, in many minds, not fair to residents not hooked up to the town sewer lines.

Armand Verville, an Allenstown resident with a septic system, has spoken out against transferring the cost to taxpayers, as the current warrant article is written. Rather, he told sewer commissioners, he would like to see the ratepayers absorb most of the cost.

Sandy McKenny, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, voted not to recommend the new warrant article because, she said, she doesn’t feel the town is ready to absorb the cost.

Without the help of various grants the project qualifies for, taxpayers could see an increase on their bills of $1.67 per $1,000 of assessed value in the first year of the bond repayment, which would be a year after construction is complete, Trainque said.

For the owner of a home assessed at $200,000, that increase could amount to an extra $334 in that year’s tax bill.

The tax increase is compounded, McKenney said, by the fact that Bear Brook Park comprises 51 percent of the town and generates no tax revenue, along with several mobile home parks in town, leaving the brunt of the tax burden with a rather small group of residents.

Trainque said the expansion has a good shot of getting one or a combination of several federal and state grants which have the potential to knock millions off the price tag, but the applications can’t go through until Allenstown voters pass the entire amount of the bond.

Pembroke’s interest in this is greater in terms of development, said Pembroke Sewer Commissioner Harold Thompson at the public meeting. Currently, there are developers lined up for construction, he said.

Pembroke would have to decide how to fund its share of the project, for $7.8 million of the total costs, after Allenstown voters pass the expansion.

Pembroke would either have to schedule a special Town Meeting or wait until the 2009 elections to put the question of funding the expansion to voters.

“I’ve got enough commercial property stuff that I don’t think it would be hard to pass it on our side,” Thompson said.

Pembroke Selectman Cindy Lewis, also a liason to the Planning Board, agreed Pembroke is ready and likely willing to absorb the expansion costs, given the potential development and end to the moratorium it would bring.

“Pembroke would want the increase,” she said of taxes. “It’s going to be good for growth in both towns.”

With Pembroke’s larger tax base, the effect on taxpayers would be less than that of Allenstown, but no official numbers on that potential impact have been released.