Southside Businesses Consider Protesting Storm-water Fee
Styleweekly is reporting that some on the south side believe that the new storm-water fee is being applied unfairly:
Ralph Hodge, the pastor of Second Baptist Church on Broad Rock Boulevard, says the city formula translated into an $8,500 bill for his church. “The city came up with the numbers pretty much arbitrarily,” Hodge says. “There’s no federal guidelines to fees or charges or anything.”
Michelle Virts, the deputy director of the city’s Department of Public Utilities, says the formula Richmond uses is “a best practice that’s been used across the country, and it’s equitable because it takes into account each individual parcel’s impervious surface.”
Let’s suggest this: if the people of a district, say for discussion the Eighth, don’t support the stormwater utility, the city would rescind the utility for that district, and agree to do no stormwater management in that district at all. If there are EPA/DEQ fines for non-compliance, they would apply to that district alone. If yards flood, ditches are clogged, water stands, citizens could use private contractors, at their own expense, to pay for the mitigation. For those who suggest they will seek General Assembly support, I suspect the city would be happy to have the state pick up the costs of stormwater management.