Bart Hinkle at the Times-Dispatch has taken after Mayor L. Douglas Wilder for the second time in a week for proposing to levy a fee upon property owners to pay for much-needed storm water projects. While Hinkle concedes the need for improvements — citing the devastating flooding in the Battery Park and Shockoe Bottom areas — he questions the need to “sock homeowners with an annual fee of $89, and levy considerably higher fees upon businesses, nonprofit groups and even churches.”
Normally, I find Hinkle’s logic impeccable. This time, I fear, he has stumbled. He cites evidence, for instance, of widespread waste in city government. A city auditor found $19 million just by looking at a part of school system operations. He also takes issue with the city’s absurd rate structure for water and wastewater. The basic rate is $43.56 per month, more than twice that of neighboring Henrico County. But volume users get a price break. “The more water and water-disposal service you use, the less you pay per volume unit,” he chastises. “Not only does this not encourage conseration — it actively encourages consumption.”
Wasteful and counter-productive? You bet! Relevant to storm-water improvements? No, not really. No. Two wrongs (or three, or four, or even more — we’re talking City of Richmond here) don’t make a right.
Of course, Richmond needs to tighten up operations and cut administrative overhead. And when it does so, it should rebate the savings to taxpayers in the form of lower property taxes. Absolutely, Richmond needs to implement a water/sewer rate structure that encourages customers to conserve water rather than reward them for wasting it.
Following the same line of logic, Richmond needs to pay for storm water improvements in a way, to quote my previous post on this topic, establishes “a logical nexus between who pays, how much they pay and what they’re paying for.” And that’s what Wilder’s proposal would do. In contrast to city water/sewer rates, Wilder would charge property owners according to the amount of rooftop and pavement on their land, and it would reduce the charges based on the implementation of measures that reduce the run-off or improve its quality.
Is there a way of achieving that aim more efficiently than Wilder has proposed? Perhaps. I’m open to suggestions. Hinkle recommends taxing tarmac “by charging a runoff fee for every hundred square feet of parking lot.”
That might well make sense. It shouldn’t be too difficult, using aerial photography, to calculate the square footage of impermeable surface on individual properties. Adjustments could be made for the existence of curbs, gutters, storm sewers, drainage ditches, retaining ponds and other control measures. Whatever the final calculus, however, the solution should have nothing to do with waste in the school system or the improvidence of water/sewer fees. The levy should adhere to one core principle: Polluters pay. The more they pollute, the more they pay. The less they pollute, the less they pay.