Posted on 07/06/2009 6:45:47 AM PDT by angkor
Utilities: Smart Billing By Staff Reports Published: July 6, 2009 A little more than a year ago, the Wilder administration and the City Council backed off a proposed stormwater fee to underwrite infrastructure projects, many of which the council killed off for financial reasons. This year the council decided it could put matters off no longer, and adopted a budget that included a stormwater fee. City residents have received brochures. In a few weeks, they'll receive the bills, which typically will run in the neigbhorhood of $50 for the year. Businesses will have to shell out, too. Although we're not in the habit of cheering taxes and fees, this one makes sense. The fee is based on the amount of impervious surface per property, and the money collected will go to the upkeep of stormwater drop inlets, ditches, catch basins, and so on. That marks an improvement over the practice of paying for these projects out of the general fund, under which the amount paid bore no relation to the amount of runoff from a property. Like other localities, Richmond is under mandate to improve its stormwater system. The changes will help improve the health of the Chesapeake and forestall federal intervention in that regard. As the system matures, we'd like to see it incorporate incentives for owners who adopt measures -- rain barrels, rain gardens, grassy swales, and so forth -- that reduce runoff in environmentally friendly ways. Rewarding residents and businesses for taking such steps would make a smart system even smarter.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
As for this bizarro rationale: "The fee is based on the amount of impervious surface per property, and the money collected will go to the upkeep of stormwater drop inlets, ditches, catch basins, and so on."
.... didn't we used to call that "upkeep" of storm drains and ditches, "taxes"?
Seems like Rat municipal governments are out to drop every possible civic responsibility they have in order to finance their jobs, and to then assess "user fees" (i.e., "more taxes") for tasks that should have been paid from the general fund in the first place.
Ridiculous.
Does the Richmond Times-Dispatch employ high school dropouts for its editorial page?
(This time with paragraphs, which the auto-excerpting removed from the first attempt above)
Utilities: Smart Billing
By Staff Reports
Published: July 6, 2009
A little more than a year ago, the Wilder administration and the City Council backed off a proposed stormwater fee to underwrite infrastructure projects, many of which the council killed off for financial reasons. This year the council decided it could put matters off no longer, and adopted a budget that included a stormwater fee.
City residents have received brochures. In a few weeks, they’ll receive the bills, which typically will run in the neigbhorhood of $50 for the year. Businesses will have to shell out, too.
Although we’re not in the habit of cheering taxes and fees, this one makes sense. The fee is based on the amount of impervious surface per property, and the money collected will go to the upkeep of stormwater drop inlets, ditches, catch basins, and so on. That marks an improvement over the practice of paying for these projects out of the general fund, under which the amount paid bore no relation to the amount of runoff from a property.
Like other localities, Richmond is under mandate to improve its stormwater system. The changes will help improve the health of the Chesapeake and forestall federal intervention in that regard. As the system matures, we’d like to see it incorporate incentives for owners who adopt measures — rain barrels, rain gardens, grassy swales, and so forth — that reduce runoff in environmentally friendly ways. Rewarding residents and businesses for taking such steps would make a smart system even smarter.
Every time you see the word “smart”, hold onto your wallet.
I was going to make the point that their promised reductions for "rain barrels, rain gardens, grassy swales, and so forth" will just happen to be too hard to administer and reducing the fee will cause the sewers to back up and drown children and kittens, so the fees will remain.
And a hat tip to the Tertium Quids blog and to Instpundit, which both raised the issue this morning:
http://tertiumquids.blogspot.com/2009/07/runoff-tax.html
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Runoff Tax
The Richmond Times-Dispatch cheers the city’s implementation of a new fee (what you call a tax) on rainwater runoff. The reasoning goes as follows:
The fee is based on the amount of impervious surface per property, and the money collected will go to the upkeep of stormwater drop inlets, ditches, catch basins, and so on.
All items that, in the past, were paid out of the general fund, where they had to compete with other demands (and wants) for dollars. Competition for scarce dollars demands choices be made based upon greatest need or largest return on investment. But not so here:
Richmond is under mandate to improve its stormwater system. The changes will help improve the health of the Chesapeake and forestall federal intervention in that regard. As the system matures, we’d like to see it incorporate incentives for owners who adopt measures — rain barrels, rain gardens, grassy swales, and so forth — that reduce runoff in environmentally friendly ways.
I can understand the rush toward behavioral economics and the use of incentives. Taxes do create incentives, good and bad. Plus, a behavioral approach has a special appeal for snoops and scolds who really, really dislike the way you conduct yourself.
In reality, this is but another pot of money flowing into the city’s coffer that may or may not be used as advertised. Time will tell on that point, but until then, at least some Richmond residents will learn to curse the taxable rain.
Posted by Norman Leahy at 8:32 AM
And a little description of Tertium Quids from the web site:
Tertium Quids is an independent, nonpartisan, issue advocacy organization that promotes legislative efforts to expand individual opportunity and free markets, while reducing the size, role, and cost of government in Virginia.
Through grassroots education and mobilization, as well as direct contact with local and state officeholders, Tertium Quids redefines the parameters of the public debate in favor of individual liberty, dynamic entrepreneurial capitalism, private property, the rule of law, and constitutionally limited government.
Tertium Quids, Latin for “third way” or “third entity,” is composed of activists across Virginia whose loyalty and commitment are to the founding principles of our republic, rather than to party politics.
“Every time you see the word “smart”, hold onto your wallet....”
If you’re an uneducated peasant...this appears stupid...IOW don’t we ALREADY pay taxes for municipalities to do these basic civic functions?!! Otherwise WHY do we pay Taxes to start with?
I’d wager the largest tracts of “impervious” surface are mall parking lots. So taxes go up on retail-oriented commercial properties, squeezing already weakened landlords.
This is pretty much the stupidest thing at the stupidest time. So it’ll probably pass.
Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay has not been a roaring success primarily because of run-off pollution aka non-point pollution.
fill 55 gal. drums with rainwater and leave them on the mayor’s porch??
??????
I think the state of Colorado just repealed a law which made it a “crime” to harvest storm water run-off and it probably won’t be long before they find a way to tax those of us who capture it:=(
Well, the libs want to tax the air (CO2) so it just makes sense they want to tax the rain.
“drop every possible civic responsibility they have in order to finance their jobs”
Eggs Ackley! Here in Summit County, Ohio, they reassessed property taxes. They lowered the value of my house by $1,500, but raised the value of my lot by $10,000, thus sticking me with higher taxes! They did this to everyone!
We have had a stormwater tax for quite a while.
It started at $15 per year, and now it is $80 a year and going up. In fact, it is now lumped in with our real estate tax bill instead of a separate bill coming once a year.
I guess they think the peons won’t notice the hikes coming fast and furious if it’s on the outrageously high property tax statement.
We don’t even have fire hydrants here in the swamp, much less sewers, running water, septic and street lights.
I guess I’m paying for the rain water running into the swamp.
“Smart” is today’s MySpace synonym for “dumb and proud of it.”
This is one of the more ridiculous and thickheaded editorials I’ve seen in any newspaper in a very long time.
Taxes on rainwater = “runoff fee.”
Right.
If you thought that your municipal taxes were supposed to pay for "extras" like sewers, police, fire department, and schools, then you are not of the MySpace generation at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and you are not being "smart."
/sarc
Besides, Richmond is 10 miles from an estuary to the Atlantic Ocean... errrr... very bottommost couple miles of the Chesapeake Bay, thus the rainwater tax "stormwater fee" is both "smart" and "green."
/sarc again
Don't you feel better now?
I think the governments around the nation are gettin ready to how impervious they are not to the push back they going to get.
You want to tax rainwater, miles driven and the air I exhale?
Seriously, these people must have lived in a “Stupid Tree” all their lives and one day fell down, hitting every stupid branch along the way, before hitting the ground and having the day lights and good sense that God gave, knocked out of them.
I think I know what you mean, but they seem to be getting more brazen, not less.
The word “Smart” is for Stupid People. It makes them feel better about themselves and gives them a hollow sense of superiority.
And trust me, I know what I am talking about, because I am smart. And gosh darn it, people like me.
Do get the echo much ... ‘hollow sense of superiority’ echo?
You cannot buy Dihydrogen Monoxide offsets or credits.
For more information on this terrible pollutant see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
echo, echo, echo....
Just wait until they figure out a way to tax air and sunlight.
Wait a minute, I like your thinking here and I hope I remember to use it in one my many put downs to idiot savantes.
“Hollow sense of superiority that echos like an empty oil drum”.
needs work but I will think of something outrageousely clever.
Thanks for the seed.
They are empty vessels, zombies and parasites, who exist with no real will of their own and seek to recruit the rest of us and turn down our intellect.
How else do you expect people of such shallow character to act? They know they are going to take a political beating, so they are throwing as much crap on the wall as they can and seeing what sticks.
Bottom line - Tea Party Time.
I knew after I hit post I was going to get my hand slapped for bad spelling. It was too late to fix.
Fixed in the next one though.
I hereby nominate the coinage of an incorporation of snoops and scolds and declare that all future use of this awkward phrase be shortened to the succinctly expressive, Snoopscolds(s).
...the echoes of embrittled, snapping synapses the last thing we heard...
Nope, plugged yer bung.
Touche!
>>> Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay has not been a roaring success primarily because of run-off pollution aka non-point pollution. <<<<<
Probably. But if I recall a lot of that has been blamed in recent years on the effulents from chicken farming operations (i.e., Purdue) and other ag waste.
I doubt that the rain runoff from suburban Richmond driveways causes even one one-hundred-billionth of the problems in the Chesapeake. That idea by the Richmond T-D editors is actually preposterous (but in keeping with the MySpace thinking of the current generation of “objective journalists”).
Besides, Richmond VA has only a very miniscule watershed to the Bay (which is 50 miles distant), and it’s really only to the very bottom-most couple miles. In fact really only into the Atlantic Ocean itself.
Blaming Richmond driveways for pollution of the Bay, is absolutely identical to blaming car exhaust in Virginia for infant respiratory illness in Kathmandu.
How dare you refer to "shovel ready", you racist!
And calling lesbians lazy!!?! Well.... that's REALLY racist!
/sarc /sarc /sarc
That's exactly what they are doing. Someone has to pay for governments lottery style retirement pensions and benefits.
And that's why the MySpace generation at the Richmond Times-Dispatch is compelled to use "Smart" not once but twice in the same sentence.
Which I suppose means that they are double-plus "smart."
"Rewarding residents and businesses for taking such steps would make a smart system even smarter."
"Smart even smarter"!!!
Just think how "smart" a rainwater tax might be if it were "A smart policy for smart taxpayers who are getting smarter about their pollutionatory guilt and the need for even smarter runoff of impermeable smart driveways and smart sidewalks in front of green SmartHomes!"
Lemme guess...
At the same time they tax you for square footage of “of impervious surface per property” that you own, they outlaw gravel driveways as “unsightly”.
Does that sound about right?
And it's really critical to get Dihydrogen Monoxide off of Richmond's "impermeable surfaces" (driveways and lawns) and of course to remove it from the Chesapeake Bay.
They've got air covered already: cap and trade.
Which is quite literally a tax on the air.
What kind of fellow citizens do we have who believe this is acceptable, and not a monumental and cynical (but lucrative) joke played on them by Al Gore.
Really, our fellow American citizens are as dumb as donuts.
that hurt my head. What? lol
That’s 440 pounds of water plus the weight of the drum.
That's "smart" thinking and of course all great "smart" minds think alike. I was wondering exactly the same thing. But from what I can gather it seems that this is a flat tax err... hidden property tax assessment a fixed "runoff fee" that is levied regardless of one's "impervious surface" infractions.
Because it's not really about the "runoff" per se but about the fact that rain lands on your property, and it's go to go somewhere, right?
So even if you covered your property with PVC and collected all rainwater, then boiled it so that it all went back into the atmosphere as steam.....
Well.... it would still come down as rainfall on some impervious surface somewhere and still become runoff.
That's what we call "smart taxation for smart bureaucrats."
Those evil bastards! Don't they know there is a shortage of intelligence and we need to ration?
Do you if they happened to buy dumbass offset credits for their shameful plundering our precious resource? I didn't use the hyphen in dumb-ass because they are.
Do over:
Do you know if they happened to buy dumbass offset credits for their shameful plundering our precious resource?
I didn’t use the hyphen in dumb-ass because they are.
The funny thing is not so much the tax, but the things they are going to reward people for doing.
Lets say people really jump on the rain barrel idea... and honestly its free water, so its not really such a bad idea for an individual to capture at least some of that rain into barrels and use it for watering your lawn or washing your car or other things that don't require water to be fit for human consumption to do during the summer. All well and good right???
Well not exactly, you get enough folks doing that, and you wind up affecting the water tables, because less water is being fed back into the rivers and streams, which leads you to larger problems.. not enough water downriver, drought etc. Not so much an issue in VA, but out west many peoples lives have been ended over feuds over water and water rights.
>>>> No, its a tax on runoff. And honestly, if it forces folks to think a bit more about runoff when they develop, that’s a good thing <<<<
While I understand that your issues are a bit different, my comments pertain to a rainfall tax on individual homeowners in Richmond VA.
Not one penny of this covert tax will be applied to storm drains.
The funds will not be used to entice shopping center developers to provide for better rainwater handling.
Period.
“...even if you covered your property with PVC and collected all rainwater, then boiled it so that it all went back into the atmosphere as steam.....”
lmbo
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