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 ...
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.
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