Limestone County Water and Sewer Authority board chairman Mark Yarbrough said reports that he was going to resign before his six-year term is up are not true.

Yarbrough denied having told Limestone County District 1 Commissioner Gary Daly that he planned to resign before his six-year term is up in three years.

Daly said Wednesday that he had gone to Yarbrough after reading of the authority not passing two recent bond tests.

“Gary Daly asked what was going on and I showed him the numbers, but I did not tell him I was going to quit,” said Yarbrough.

However, that’s not the version Daly told.

“He said he was trying to get this bond market thing straightened out and then he would resign,” said Daly. “He said the bond people would either take over the authority or they would work to get it back the way it was. He said when they were out of that mess he would resign and not finish out his remaining three years.”

Bond tests are submitted every six months to determine a utility’s eligibility for construction bonds and determine the rates the utility must charge customers to repay the bond.

For the first bond test ended March 31, certified public accountants Annette Barnes and Cecil Armstrong with the firm of Christopher, Durham, Pepper & Armstrong, showed that the authority ended with a $2,610,661 deficit.

The second bond test for the same period, which deducted losses in connection, tapping and impact fees and decreases in interest income, had CDPA showing a $1,629,886 deficit.

The deficits are in large part due to impact fees being down by $900,000 from this time last year because of a decrease in construction.

Armstrong said that the authority owes debt service on $70 million in construction bonds, which he said was necessary to keep up with the rapid growth of the community and system.

Tuesday, David Inman, managing partner of Wyngate LLC, filed suit against the authority, alleging breach of implied contract, fraud and interference with contractual relationships. Inman says in his complaint that policies the water board passed after approving the water and sewer systems in his subdivision require him to pay $250,000 to connect to the county’s sewage treatment plant.

Among the discovery items requested by Inman’s attorney, Joel Hamner of Florence, are “copies of every subdivision plat…wherein the developer or contractor was also a board member, officer, or employee of the LCWSA.” The complaint also asks for copies of “grievances, complaints, claims of ethical violations, or accusations of potential ethical violations that have been made against the LCWSA, including but not limited to its agents, representatives, board members, directors, or employees, beginning in January 2005 through the present date.”

Yarbrough is a contractor, who said his company All-Power Construction, based in Harvest, builds roads in subdivisions. He said he has no current projects in Limestone County and does not vote on other developers’ projects.

“I don’t know what’s going on up there, but we (County Commission) can’t make them resign after we appoint them until their terms are up, but he volunteered and said he would resign,” said Daly. “If he hadn’t volunteered I would have asked him to resign because whatever problems they are having he needs to resign so we get someone in there to get the job done.”