Posted on 09/02/2016 8:58:53 AM PDT by ObozoMustGo2012
TAMPA — With rain from the outer bands of Hurricane Hermine flooding streets in South Tampa, the City Council late Thursday approved a new yearly fee to pay for better drainage citywide.
"A huge victory for our neighborhoods," Mayor Bob Buckhorn said after the vote. "Now, for the first time in countless years, we can invest in infrastructure for a system that is over 100 years old."
With the approval, anyone who owns developed property in Tampa will begin paying an annual assessment that will show up for the first time on next year's property tax bill.
The new fee starts at $45 per year for the owner of a medium-sized home, ramping up over six years to $89.55 a year. Owners with smaller homes and less pavement will pay less. Those with bigger houses, larger pools and more expansive decks will pay more.
The fee will be in place for 30 years, financing a $251 million drainage improvement program.
The 4-to-2 vote came after four hours of discussion during which more than two dozen residents spoke on both sides of the issue.
Harry Cohen, Guido Maniscalco, Lisa Montelione and Mike Suarez voted in favor of the assessment, though no one promised it would solve every flooding problem for every storm, no matter how big.
"I think it will help," Cohen said. "This problem we cannot continue to defer and delay. We have to address it. It's getting to the point where it's compromising both the economic viability and the fiscal health of the citizens of this city."
Suarez compared the program to the scene in It's a Wonderful Life when Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey persuades his building and loan customers that their money is working for each other, and they have to come together and make shared sacrifices for the good of their community.
"These problems are only going to get worse as the infrastructure ages," Montelione said. Interest rates are low, she said, so borrowing money to get the projects started will cost less. "This is the right thing to do, and I think this is the right time to do it."
Charlie Miranda and Frank Reddick voted against the fee. Reddick said it would hit the poor and elderly too hard. Miranda said no one could say how much relief it would provide.
"The good people who live in this city deserve a better plan than this to solve this problem," he said.
Not voting was Yvonne Yolie Capin, who stayed home because of the severe weather. She said it was "extremely irresponsible" to encourage residents to come out for a public hearing when the weather had led authorities to close Bayshore Boulevard and the Sunshine Skyway.
But about 60 residents did turn out, and more than a third of them weighed in.
Opponents said the method used to calculate the fee was flawed, and that it unfairly penalized property owners who have paid to put in stormwater vaults or other storage structures, or that it gave advantages to some residents but not others.
"I don't think it's fair," said Mamie Lucas, who said the retention ponds in her East Tampa neighborhood of Highland Pines are choked with weeds. "The poor is paying for this and ... the rich is sliding by. It is not fair for us to have to assume this for 30 years."
Supporters, many from flood-prone South Tampa, said not doing anything would discourage business, compromise public safety and hurt productivity by making it impossible for residents to get in or out of their homes, businesses and schools.
"Believe you me, I would rather not pay this fee," said the Rev. Len Plazewski, pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church, where the fee will top out at about $10,000 a year. "But it is sound Catholic teaching to not just look after one's self-interest but rather to do what is in the best interest of the common good. It is not in the common good that so many of our streets continue to flood on a regular basis."
The city already assesses a fee on all owners of developed property to pay to sweep streets, clean out ditches and ponds and unplug outfalls into Tampa Bay. Currently, that fee stands at $82 for owners of medium-sized houses.
The new, second fee approved Thursday will pay for about 150 neighborhood-scale drainage projects and five major projects designed to move water more quickly out of larger basins.
"These investments will leave our city in a better place for years to come," Buckhorn said.
But exempt from the fee will be areas like New Tampa, Harbour Island and MacDill Air Force Base where developers have already paid for drainage systems that do not discharge water to the city's storm sewers.
As part of the new fee, the city is creating a hardship program to pay the fee for older homeowners who are disabled or are disabled veterans, who live in homes assessed at less than $100,000 and whose incomes do not exceed set limits.
The city also has tried to make it easier for property owners to apply for a mitigation credit to lower either fee because their property was designed to keep water from flowing into the street.
Still, the mitigation policy is flawed, said Gina Grimes, an attorney for four car dealerships that will pay $1 million over the assessment's 30-year term. Property in New Tampa and Harbour Island pays nothing, she said, but property owners elsewhere in the city can't get a credit of more than 10 percent, no matter how good their on-site stormwater systems are.
"Is that fair and reasonable?" she asked. City officials said that work to refine the mitigation policy is already underway, with an engineering study and recommendations due to the council in March.
The fee will be in place for 30 years, financing a $251 million drainage improvement program.
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They’ll never get rid of it, or keep it from growing.
I guess we can cross them off the potential retirement location list.
I’ve done more to collect storm water than any of my neighbors. Most just build large rock-lined ditches to dump water off their property as quickly as possible. The right way to do it is to collect it in strategic spots so it can soak in and water the trees. Enlightened storm water management is not going to come from aiming a gun at someone’s head (i.e. tax collection). It is going to come from education and incentives. I educated myself and gain satisfaction.
Maryland no longer the only place where they tax the rain.
[I guess we can cross them off the potential retirement location list.]
Yup. I was looking forward to relocating there from New Jersey in the next year or two...
I am SO pissed!!!
Just like we’re still paying a nickle a month on our phone bill that financed the Spanish American war.
As some one who had to deal with this “issue” twice in my career, once as the Public Works Director for a city and again as the Public Works Director for a county, I can tell you my experience and perspective.
First, prior to enacting these ordinances and fees, the city and county already had maintenance crews clean the system and make repairs where needed, and those works tasks were budgeted out of their regular fund revenues. What these new ordinances do is monetize the work so that it has it’s own revenue source.
Second, I always set my fees as low as possible and they were based on average impervious area of the average residential lot. In the case of the city the average lot was 10,000 square feet and had 3,000sf of impervious surface (house, sidewalks around the house not the ones on the street, patios and driveways). This is called the “Equivalent Residential Unit” or ERU charge. I set my fee at $2.75 per month for all residential property (10,000sf/ERU). Commercial and Industrial were charged on the size of their lot divided by 10,000sf so that if the lot size was 40,000sf they were charged $2.75 X 4 or $11/month. This gave them a built in offset for building their own stormwater systems separate of the city system regardless if they had almost 100% impervious site coverage they were only charged for 12,000sf. At the county I worked for they did just the opposite in that they charged for every 3,000sf of impervious and that required the county to survey each individual lot and determine the fee and it did not allow any credit for stormwater site improvements.
Third, at the county when I came on board they were charging $5/ERU (3,000sf/ERU) but the county wasn’t doing anything for money for the two years prior. No additional maintenance improvements, just collecting a boat load of money. I was able to convince the powers that be to reduce that fee to $4/eru for 6 years which by then we would have drawn down the money in the bank and then it would require an increase to $4.75 for the foreseeable future to sustain the program . We used that money to purchase equipment and hire 2 staff that would only work on cleaning and repairing the system.
Fourth, once the county residents saw we were committed to actually doing things with the money by responding to complaints and fixing these issues the community accepted the program without much complaint, but we still had few folks that were not happy about it.
Fifth, before anyone replies that people should not be happy about, let me say that I was never thrilled about it either but I was not in the position to fight the Dept. of Ecology, my elected officials, or the EPA.
Can they use that money to build a long ditch to California? - we could use that water.
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