Lee's Summit committee debates stormwater utility, leans toward sales-tax approach

City engineer George Binger delivered a detailed presentation on July 14 outlining options for dedicated stormwater funding in Lee's Summit and sketched the likely costs and administrative trade-offs of each approach.

Binger said the city's estimated annual need to add two operations crews, cover small capital projects and provide regulatory/administrative support is in the roughly $6.1–$6.2 million range. He described three primary options: a property-tax levy (roughly $0.22 per $100 of assessed valuation, which staff said equates to roughly $150–$160 per year for the median $350,000 home), a sales-tax approach (staff discussed an eighth-of-a-cent producing about $3.1 million and a quarter-cent approaching $6–7 million), and a user fee based on impervious area (staff provided a billing-unit model using 500 square feet as one billing unit and an estimated 438,000 billing units citywide).

Staff highlighted equity and administration trade-offs: a user fee is more directly tied to impervious area and is arguably more equitable for cost recovery but requires substantial administrative setup (GIS digitization, customer mapping, creation of credits/exemptions and billing infrastructure) and could take about two years to go live. Binger said monthly billing would have higher administrative costs and a higher uncollected-revenue assumption than annual billing.

Jeff Thorne, director of water utilities, raised concerns about running a user fee through existing water bills: "The answer to that is 0 because if they don't pay their sewer bill, we'll shut them off," he said, explaining that water-billing practices and partial payments introduce complications and public perception issues. Thorne also warned that adding a separate stormwater line to the water bill may constrain the ability to adjust water and sewer rates because customers see a single combined bill.

Multiple council members said they were inclined to pursue a sales-tax-centered scenario, noting it is easier to administer and spreads cost across visitors and businesses; others emphasized the urgency of starting funding sooner rather than later and asked staff to return with a comparative sales-tax analysis vs. peer cities and a timeline for an April election window.

Binger and staff agreed to provide a deeper-dive presentation next month with comparative sales-tax burdens, a refined timeline for a possible user-fee implementation, and scenarios for blended options. No formal policy decision or ordinance was adopted at the meeting; the committee requested additional analysis and public education before returning to committee or placing a measure before voters.

Reporting note: dollar figures and unit counts are taken from staff presentation as read into the record; where the transcript gave closely similar figures (e.g., 6.1M vs. 6.2M; $150 vs. $160) this article reports the range and notes estimates.