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Public hearing on proposed storm water fee
by Rick DeClue · News · April 17, 2014


Community members brought questions and concerns about the proposed storm water management fee to the West Branch City Council last week.


The council also set a public hearing 7 p.m. April 21 for additional comments prior to the council’s vote on a resolution to form the utility.

At the April 7 meeting, Procter & Gamble Site Leader Cheryl Fischer, Hoover National Historic Site Superintendent Pete Swisher, Mayor Pro Tem Colton Miller — who also manages West Branch Village — and real estate agent and West Branch School Board President Kathy Knoop asked questions and raised concerns about the proposed utility.

The storm water management utility is intended to generate roughly $40,000 in fees in its first year from all users of the city’s storm water system.

Fischer said P&G objected to the proposed utility. She said the company had already built a substantial storm water retention system on their site, and had cooperated in addressing storm water runoff issues with adjacent property owners.

Acknowledging that the company felt they have a good working relationship with the city, Fischer said, “We’ve done everything you asked.”

Swisher said he was not opposed to the fee, but questioned the city’s definition of a park in the proposed resolution, given that park land is one property category that is exempt.

While he accepts that the federal facility is not exempt from paying utility bills, Swisher is concerned that adding the fee to the park’s tight operating budget may cut into education or conservation initiatives.

Swisher pointed out that the Hoover Association, which supports the Hoover Comples, made storm water retention improvements by helping fund construction of the so-called “Hoover Dam.”

NPS in 2018 plans to spend up to $3.9 million for additional retention work, he said. The targeted area, as defined in a 2006 study by the NPS, is roughly in land south of West Branch Ford angling to the Hoover gravesite.

Swisher also noted that while the city benefits from the NPS work in flood control, the primary purpose of that work is to protect the Hoover Library and all of its documents and other content from damage up to a “50-year flood.”

Miller said West Branch Village gets storm water to its own stretch of creek and maintains that stretch.

He said he believes that, “once it flows off the property, it is the next guy’s problem.”

Mayor Mark Worrell said the city’s storm water management needs to be looked at as a whole, not just for a single user or a single event.

Worrell said every time a subdivision developer delivers a storm water management feature, such as a swale or catch basin, to the city in the form of an easement, the city has to maintain that part of the system forever.

Knoop asked several questions about the use of general funds vs. a new fee. Speaking for herself, she said when her family has particular budget needs that arise, they have to look for other areas to cut back. She suggested that the council needed to work harder to make appropriate funding decisions in the general fund.

Worrell responded that the city makes those decisions regularly, but there are a lot of needs.

Council member Tim Shields said that left open the possibility of raising property taxes to increase the general fund.

In closing, Knoop partly to the audience to say, “Well, I don’t want to see any more taxes.”

Dave Schechinger of Veenstra and Kimm, addressed Fischer and Swisher to say retention ponds which do not stay wet year-round are primarily meant to control the release of water, but still drain into the storm sewer.

Council member Mary Beth Stevenson is also the Iowa-Cedar River Basin Coordinator for the state Department of Natural Resources.

Stevenson said the storm water utility has everyone pay based on the amount of impervious area on their property — the area covered by structures, pavement or other things that block the water from being absorbed where it falls. She emphasized that managing storm water is a shared responsibility in a community.

“For those that do not believe that, I would remind them of the flooded streets from last spring’s storms,” she said. Hoover Creek rose seven feet in a matter of a couple of hours during those storms, Stevenson said.

As to P&G, City Administrator Matt Muckler said many communities in Iowa have established or are in the process of establishing similar utilities. He was sure that P&G in Iowa City was paying into that city’s established utility.

Muckler also acknowledged that the NPS had been at the table discussing this issue for several years. The city did agree with Swisher that certain roads near and adjacent to the park that are maintained by the NPS really represent public streets that should not be included in the measurement of impervious ground to determine the park’s fee.

Muckler said the city has had the formation of a storm water utility near the top of its annual goal-setting sessions since 2011. The city feels this action would be consistent with past utilities formed so that water pays for water and sanitary sewers pay for sanitary sewers.

Like those two city enterprises, the funds raised by the storm water management fee could only be used for storm water management, said Muckler.

In our existing system, some parts of town do not have storm sewers or curbs and gutter, some parts have them, but they do not work, said Worrell.

For years the city has not had a way to systematically address even the most obvious problems, he continued. This utility represents a way to start doing the planning, repairing and maintaining the existing parts and construction of new pieces to make the system work better, said the mayor.

The utility is designed to charge all those who the city’s storm water system as fairly as possible, including schools and other tax exempt properties, said Muckler.

This was in partial response to questions about why the city did not simply fund the stormwater work with general funds.

Worrell said that is what has happened for years, but with poor results. We need a way to start to systematically fund and address the city’s storm water needs, he said, because it only gets worse from here.