IF YOU GO
The Storm Water Regulation Board will next meet at 3 p.m. Monday at the Development Resources Center, room 1A.
The city of Chattanooga is asking state delegates to help keep nearly 2,000 of the city's poorest residents from having substantial new bills to pay.
That's because the city may have to start charging water-quality fees to the elderly and disabled.
Public Works Director Lee Norris said Friday that when water-quality fees were first implemented citywide in 1993, officials wrote in an exemption for senior citizens and disabled veterans who qualified for state tax relief.
According to city code, those who are 65 or older and making less than $25,000 a year or those who are completely disabled veterans "shall be exempt from payment of fees on that property which they use as their residence."
But a recently discovered state attorney general's opinion from 2006 caused city officials to pause.
"That says we can't exclude storm water fees for those people," Norris said.
According to the attorney general opinion released in December 2006, the state's storm water rules allow municipalities to establish storm water user fees, lay out the method for calculating them and set forth an exemption to the fees. But those fees can't be covered by the state's tax relief program, because they are not taxes, according to the opinion.
"Tennessee's tax relief program applies to property taxes but not to user fees. Exempting those who qualify for the state tax relief program does not fall within the bounds of the statutory user fee exemption and is inconsistent with the user fee methodology mandated by state law," according to the attorney general opinion.
It said a fee exemption for low-income elderly or completely disabled veterans would mean "there would not be a proportionate distribution of all costs to each user or user class. Providing an exemption to those qualifying for the tax relief program necessarily violates the mandatory proportionality requirement."
Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said the city isn't changing the way it has handled the fees until it tries to alleviate the issue legislatively.
"We are going to delay any action until we understand all possible options," he said. "If needed, we will formally ask our state delegation to help us remedy this at the state level so we can avoid placing a greater burden on our elderly and low-income residents."
Norris said Friday the water quality fee for residential property is $115.20 a year per home, and property value doesn't play a role in the calculation.
According to Hamilton County Trustee reports, more than 1,930 people living in Chattanooga qualify for the fee-exempt status under the original program. That would bring in an estimated $222,451 in water quality fees to the city.