.jpg)
Listening Sessions To Be Scheduled
Lexington City Council held a work session last week where members discussed several topics, including a proposed stormwater utility fee that the city is considering implementing.
Council first began discussing the possibility of implementing a stormwater utility fee in 2018, but consideration was put on hold during the COVID pandemic.
The proposed fee would serve to collect revenue for the city to help pay for a variety of improvements to the city’s stormwater system. The goal is to raise between $500,000 and $700,000 per year to help cover those costs.
The city has already completed a few projects connected to the stormwater system, including work on Lime Kiln Road, Enfield Road and East Nelson Street (projects that cost between $320,000 and $413,000 which could have been paid for from a stormwater utility fee).
The city also has several projects in the planning stage, including building a new retention pond at the end of White Street, which the city has been awarded some grant money to help pay for. City officials are also in the planning phase for projects on Diamond Street, Randolph Street and Henry Street, and have identified a dozen other potential projects throughout the city.
The current proposal is for a fee of 60 cents for every 250 square feet of impervious area owned by an individual. The total number of square footage would round down, so someone with 499 square feet would have to pay for only one unit of impervious area, while a homeowner with 501 would have to pay for two.
This fee would apply to everyone in Lexington, including properties that are exempt from property taxes, such as Washington and Lee University and the Virginia Military Institute.
Hunter Young, president of the Civil Consulting Group, who has been overseeing the studies and data collection to help the city implement the fee, presented Council with some preliminary assessments for a number of properties in the city, including the two universities.
According to the preliminary estimate, VMI has 2,195,910 square feet of impervious area, equating to 8,783 billable units. At the 60 cents per month fee, the institute’s bill would be $63,238 for that amount of impervious surface. That number will likely change before the final assessments are made as the assessment presented did not include the aquatic center and any potential credits the institute might receive.
W&L, according to the same preliminary assessment, has 6,595 billable units of impervious area for a total of $47,484.
The city is considering a credit for properties that have systems that meet Department of Environmental Quality standards, so the universities may qualify for those.
Stormwater fees are becoming increasingly common in Virginia’s cities, with Roanoke, Staunton, Harrisonburg and Charlottesville all having a fee. They range from $1.05 to $6 per 500 square feet of impervious surface.
City Manager Tom Carroll is proposing implementing the fee incrementally, beginning with a 30 cent fee on July 1, 2025, and then increasing it to the proposed 60 cents in July of 2026. The proposed 60-cent fee will generate a little over $440,000 for the city, which is short of the goal, so a rate change may be considered beginning in July of 2027.
“I doubt this has been a popular fee anywhere it has been implemented, but it’s fairly widespread … so we can learn from others’ best practices so we can do best by ourselves and by our citizens,” Mayor Frank Friedman commented.
Council member David Sigler asked how properties with multiple water meters would be billed for the fee, if that would be something the property owner would be responsible for or if it would go onto the individual water bills. Carroll said that that was something that was still “to be determined.” He also suggested swimming pools not be counted toward impervious area (it was in the initial assessment) as pools lose water to evaporation as well as drainage.
There was some concern among Council members about where the city’s portion of the stormwater fee would come from, if the additional expense may mean an increase in taxes or not. The city, based on the preliminary estimates, would pay about 10 percent of the $440,000 from the impervious surfaces on its properties (city hall, schools, fire department, police department, etc.). Council member Charles Aligood noted that, since the fee would apply to everyone in the city, it could be perceived as “more fair.”
Council member Chuck Smith commented that the fee could mean that property taxes may not need to be raised as much since the stormwater projects wouldn’t be paid for from the property taxes.
Council member Leslie Straughan noted that in the capital investment plan prepared by Davenport, the recommendation was to increase property tax by two cents each year to cover the costs of upcoming capital projects, which would include more than just the stormwater system improvements. A stormwater fee was not taken into account in Davenport’s recommendations.
“There’s really no silver bullet to cause fiscal relief,” Carroll said. “There’s no way to manufacture new money. This [stormwater utility] is an additional tool to add into our toolbox, and it could be used in ways to mix and match differently with other tools.”
The next step in the process is to hold listening sessions to get input from citizens and institutions about the fee. The sessions have not been scheduled yet, but they will held over the next few weeks. The current proposed timeline will have an ordinance establishing the stormwater fee coming before Council at its Dec. 5 meeting.
