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 ...
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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