Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Stormwater Fees topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Mark Andrews urges flat stormwater fee, council raises measurement and implementation questions
Summary
Resident Mark Andrews told the Garrett City Council the city should adopt a flat stormwater fee like Fort Wayne's ERU system and argued against a lengthy tax abatement for a residential rehab; council members pressed staff on how tiers would be measured and enforced.
Mark Andrews, of 417 South Peter Street, urged the Garrett City Council to adopt a flat stormwater fee billed on water statements and modeled on Fort Wayne’s ERU (equivalent residential unit) system. "I think it ought to be just a flat fee starting 1 of January," Andrews said, citing a $6.38 monthly ERU he saw in Fort Wayne for smaller homes.
Andrews said a flat charge would help fund storm-drain maintenance and vacuum-truck costs. He contrasted Garrett City’s smaller tax base with Fort Wayne’s 88,000 homes and said a simple, low monthly fee would be easier for residents to absorb.
Council members and staff raised detailed questions about how a local ERU program would be implemented. One council member asked whether tiers should be based on lot size or house square footage; Andrews and others said Fort Wayne tiers were based on house size. A staff member said parcel assessment would likely rely on Beacon records and would require reviewing each parcel to determine house size and impervious coverage: "so we would have to go through each and every single parcel and each and every single house to determine a square footage," the staff member said.
Officials noted complications the council would need to resolve before adopting any fee: whether accessory structures (detached garages or sheds), unpermitted additions, or large paved yards would be counted; how to treat multi‑year construction projects (for example, whether a commercial site would be charged when it gets a permit or only after a certificate of occupancy); and whether the utility department has capacity to maintain parcel-level data.
The council did not take a vote on a stormwater fee during this meeting. Staff indicated the topic will require further analysis of parcel data, ordinance language and administrative procedures before the council would consider a formal proposal.
