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Council pauses to weigh sharp commercial increases under proposed drainage-fee tiers
Summary
City staff showed a tiered drainage-fee model based on impervious surface that would raise some large commercial accounts substantially; council members asked staff to return with options for phased implementation and credits while staff noted an existing resolution directs implementation once billing can be configured.
Hurricane — City staff unveiled a revised drainage-fee model that uses impervious-surface tiers to calculate monthly charges and showed the city-wide impervious area at roughly 26.7 million square feet. Arthur, the staff presenter, said the spreadsheet applied 5,000-square-foot increments and that the top tier (over 1,000,000 square feet) would cap very large properties at a monthly multiplier intended to lower extreme bills.
"If you take that 26,700,000 square feet and divide it by 5,000 and then times it by 11, you get $58,716 a month," Arthur said while showing the calculations to the council. He said staff set a top-tier multiplier so that very large parcels would pay a more moderate $2,200 rather than an unconstrained figure.
Council members reacted strongly to sample bills in the model. One councilor asked whether businesses that already built detention basins or retention features would still be charged the full fee, noting that property owners had paid up-front infrastructure costs. Arthur said credits exist in some jurisdictions but are difficult to administer fairly.
"There have been credits given, but I think that as time goes on, those are probably gonna go away because they're just really complicated and maybe not that defensible," Arthur said. He and others said staff would explore whether phased-in approaches or credit systems could soften the immediate impact on commercial accounts.
Staff legal counsel reminded the council there is an adopted resolution that directs implementation but that billing will not start until staff can configure the billing system and verify impervious areas on records. "The resolution said that it went into effect immediately, but it wouldn't be implemented until staff could figure out how to put it into the billing system and calculate the impervious surfaces for the various businesses," Dayton said.
The council directed staff to place the drainage-fee schedule on a future agenda for further discussion and recommended exploring multi-year phase-ins, possible large-account transition tiers, and clearer outreach to affected businesses before bills are mailed.
