The city’s commercial and non-residential sectors have reasonably chafed under the onerous fees placed recently on them to handle the city’s long-neglected problem of pollution from uncontrolled stormwater run-off. The blue ribbon committee created by the City Council to study the issue had hoped to present a compromise proposal today that would dramatically reduce the controversial fee. But if the committee proposes a new fee – and it seems likely that it will – it apparently will not have city government’s support.
City Council Chairman Jack Benson and blue ribbon committee chairman Bill Raines said Monday that the impasse has occurred because Mayor Ron Littlefield’s administration has stiffed the committee’s efforts at good faith negotiations. They said the administration has refused to present a detailed budget for the city’s stormwater program and past expenditures, has introduced legal obstacles to thwart City Council action and has countered the committee’s proposal with a higher compromise cost without adequate documentation.
The impasse seems needless. Mr. Raines told this page Monday that the mayor’s chief assistant, Dan Johnson, had suggested to him that the city would be willing to cut the base residential rate of $9.60 per ERU to $6.50 for the non-residential sector, but refused to provide the financial basis for the offer or a proposed budget for spending new fee revenue.
Mr. Raines said his study committee, which has worked on the stormwater fee issue for nine weeks, probably would go forward with a proposal to set the non-residential rate at $5, and a schedule to begin reducing the base residential rate. The $5 non-residential rate, the committee’s report shows, still would be the highest in the state, and well above the average $3.31 rate for the state’s nine largest cities. In fact, the $6.50 rate suggested by Mr. Johnson, the committee believes, would be highest in the Southeast. The committee’s study found the highest present rate in the Southeast to be $6.
The rate, generally referred to as the ERU rate, reflects the “Equivalent Residential Unit” average on which stormwater fees are based. The rate is derived from the city’s estimated costs of processing stormwater runoff from an average city residence containing 3,200 square feet of impervious surfaces (roofs, sidewalks and driveways). Municipal and county governments are required to contain or process such runoff under EPA and state environmental laws to prevent industrial, commercial and urban pollution to water resources.