By Corey Lewis - Daily World Writer, The Aberdeen Daily World 1/9/2001
Sometimes the devil is in the details.
The City of Aberdeen's $4 monthly stormwater utility fee proposed last week got some close scrutiny Wednesday night at a City Council workshop session.
In a wide - ranging discussion, the council discussed preventive measures to avoid sudden utility rate hikes and some council members suggested that the proposed stormwater utility fee is really a masked sewer rate hike.
The new $4 fee was recommended to the City Council last week in a report from Public Works Director Larry Bledsoe in order to fund a new stormwater utility. The new utility would be operated and maintained by the city's Street Department. Maintenance work is now shared between the Street and Sewer departments.
Money to maintain the city's stormwater drainage system currently comes from a portion of the city's sewer fee. Under the proposed plan, sewer rates would not be lowered, even though wastewater would no longer fall under the purview of the Sewer Department and the city would collect the $4 monthly fee for wastewater.
Instead, surplus revenue from sewer fees would be put aside to save for bond payments on future upgrades to the sewage treatment plant.
During the workshop, Sixth Ward Councilman Jim Manenica expressed concern that the city was not being forthcoming about the nature of the new fee. He argued that since the stormwater system used to be funded by money from the sewer fee, but the sewer fee will not decrease when the separate stormwater fee takes effect, it's essentially a masked sewer rate hike.
"For this fee, the citizens of Aberdeen are getting what they already have," Manenica told Bledsoe during the workshop. "What alarms me is that we're not calling this a sewer fee hike."
Bledsoe responded that the important thing was not where the money came from, but that the city is able to do the upgrades to the sewage treatment plant. The city is feeling pressure from the Department of Ecology and the Friends of Grays Harbor, a local environmental group. The Public Works director said the longer the city waits to do the repairs, the more expensive it will be. Fifth Ward Councilman Bill Simpson agreed.
"Nobody wants to raise the fee; nobody can afford it," Simpson said. "Whether you live in Bel - Aire or under a bridge somewhere, any new fee is a burden. But we are looking at FOGH and the Department of Energy breathing down our necks to do this work."
"I realize we need to do the (sewage treatment plant upgrades), but I'm not willing to do so at the expense of the stormwater utility fee," Manenica responded. "If we're going to raise the sewer rate, we need to say so."
After the meeting, Bledsoe said he was glad to hear the concerns voiced.
"I think that Councilman Manenica expressed some very valid concerns and I believe they need to be addressed," Bledsoe said after the meeting. "Because really the effect of this utility fee is not an increase in what's being spent on storm drainage. The net effect is what's available for expenditure on sewers.
"When I now stand back and look at it cold, I can see where somebody could look at that and say, 'Hey, you're doing an end run on me here," Bledsoe added.
Bledsoe said he was going to put together information for both the City Council and ratepayers in order to clarify the exact terms of the new fee.
Fourth Ward Councilman Bob Wiggins also agreed with Manenica's concern, but said the City Council needs to create money for the sewage treatment plant quickly. It also needs to do it carefully - and more carefully in the future - so the city can anticipate when it needs money to do large projects.
"We, as a council, need to make sure that we say to our customers, the citizens, 'Hey, we've done the homework and we don't have a lot of choices," Wiggins said. "The worst thing we can do is play a lot of politics and say, 'Well, let's delay this or do this.' We can't increase (the fee) without having all of the facts and looking very carefully inside ourselves."
The City Council will revisit the new fee next Wednesday during its committee meetings at 7:15 on the third floor of City Hall.
Corey Lewis, a Daily World writer, can be reached at 532 - 4000, ext. 130, or at clewis@thedailyworld.com
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