COMMENTARY

“Limited-government extremists, now represented by Howle and Turner, are just one City Council seat away from ensuring that Vero Beach does its part in helping to kill the Lagoon.”

MARK SCHUMANN

Acting on recommendations from the Utilities and Finance Commissions, the Vero Beach City Council yesterday voted 3-2 to allocate an additional $50,000 for Collective Water Resources to complete a study on implementing a stormwater utility tax – or user fee, depending on how one sees it.

Given to hyperbole, Councilman Harry Howle argued the move would create “another branch of government.” Requiring property owners to pay the cost of handling stormwater runoff from their properties hardly amounts to creating a new branch of government.

Collecting a stormwater fee will not require the hiring of so much as one additional employee, yet Councilwoman Pilar Turner, herself a master at exaggeration, contends assessing a stormwater fee/tax will lead to the creation of “a new bureaucracy.”

Turner’s and Howle’s opposition to raising the needed funds to maintain and improve the City’s stormwater runoff and treatment system is limited government extremism at its worst. Last fall, Howle and Turner argued against raising property taxes, though for years maintenance of the City’s vital infrastructure, including its stormwater system, has been neglected. Last night’s debate made clear that prospect of yet a third radical, Libertarian extremist joining Howle and Turner on the City Council next fall is frightening, indeed. Limited-government extremists, now represented by Howle and Turner, are just one City Council seat away from ensuring that Vero Beach does its part in helping to kill the Lagoon.

To put the debate in perspective, consider the troubling fact that only 35 percent of the city’s stormwater runoff is now filtered before it drains into the dying Indian River Lagoon.  Turner argues that Vero Beach cannot alone save the Lagoon. Councilman Richard Winger counters that the Lagoon can only be saved if every government along the vital estuary does its part.

Public Works Director, Monti Falls, explained yesterday that the City’s system of canals, ditches, culverts and stormwater filtration sites is worth approximately $25 million. Maintaining the system, he said, requires an investment of approximately $500,000 a year.

If approved, a new stormwater tax/fee would provide those funds separate from the City’s General Fund, which depends on property tax receipts.

Assuming an assessment of approximately $5 per month for the average homeowner, a stormwater utility fee/tax would raise approximately $1 million a year. Falls said the additional $500,000 would be used over the next five years to significantly increase the rate at which his department is able to address the 65 percent of stormwater runoff currently unfiltered.

Vice Mayor Randy Old said he sees funding maintenance and improvements to the City’s stormwater runoff and filtration system through a user fee as fair, practical and necessary. “It takes it out of the (budget) debate,” he said.

Councilman Richard Winger, who joined Old and Mayor Jay Kramer in moving forward with the study, said a user fee/tax based on each property’s impervious area is not regressive, as Howle argued. “This is much fairer for the average taxpayer,” Winger said.

Currently, governments – City, County, Schools, etc. – are not charged for cost of handling stormwater runoff from their properties. Non-profits, such as churches, also get a free ride on the cost of keeping their campuses from returning to marshlands. Winger’s point is that the full cost of handling stormwater runoff is now born disproportionately by homeowners.

If Vero Beach forms a stormwater “utility” for the purpose of assessing a user fee/tax, it will be joining more than 150 Florida cities, including Fort Pierce, Fellsmere, and Sebastian, that have seen the wisdom in providing a dedicated funding source for maintaining their stormwater system. As Old, Winger and Kramer argued last night, the proper funding of the City’s stormwater system should not be left to annual budget deliberations, for those debates have in the past led the City Council to choose between repairing collapsing culverts or replacing rusted-out, 15-year-old patrol cars.