POTTSTOWN >> You can blame that new $94 annual fee you may soon be paying on the rain.
As state and federal rules regarding surface water pollution get stricter, the costs for municipal management of stormwater are starting to add up and the questions now being bandied about are who is going to pay and how much?
One increasingly popular method is a “user fee” and on Tuesday, the Pottstown Borough Authority began to mull the matter.
The occasion was a presentation by Nathan Walker from the engineering firm of Amec Foster Wheeler, which was hired last year to help form a “stormwater master plan.”
What Walker presented was not so much a master plan, as guidance on how to create one; laying out the issues which need to be addressed; where Pottstown has made progress on those issues and where it hasn’t; what infrastructure is in place and how to prioritize what to do first.
Among the items covered was a forecast of spending $106,000 to $134,000 in the coming year just to “gear-up” for what comes next.
And as aging infrastructure erodes and pollution control requirements increase, the price only escalates.
One chart Walker presented showed an annual cost of as much as $1.42 million 12 years from now.
And of course, conversation ultimately came around to who pays those costs.
Currently, the majority of those costs are paid out of Pottstown’s general fund, which means property taxpayers are shouldering the cost and, significantly, tax-exempt properties are not.
“In Pottstown, the non-profit issue is huge with all the churches we have and The Hill School,” said Authority Vice Chairman David Renn.
Since rain falls equally on tax-exempt properties as it does on taxable properties, the authority members seemed disinclined to fund the pending improvements with property tax revenues.
So far, only about a dozen municipalities among Pennsylvania’s more than 1,200 have enacted user fees, and methods differ, said Walker.
In West Chester, an ordinance that uses the square footage of a plot to calculate how much of a stormwater fee it owes is pending before borough council and, if enacted, is estimated to generate about $1.6 million a year.
In Meadeville, a community with similar economic challenges as Pottstown, residential properties pay about $90 per year, said Walker.
But those economic challenges are exactly why Authority board member Jeff Chomnuk urged the board against rushing into a decision, especially if the surrounding towns are dragging their feet on doing something similar.
He worried it will make the borough seem that much less competitive by comparison.
“I struggle with the idea of another fee being imposed on developed property in the borough,” said Chomnuk, observing it will add to the perception that it is too expensive to do business in Pottstown.
“It will be another nail in the coffin,” he said.
He also observed that because of its position along the Schuylkill River, Pottstown is the recipient of upstream pollution and sediment coming from outlying towns and they should help pay as well.
But a regional approach may be possible.
In July, Digital First Media reported on consideration of an effort in the eastern part of Montgomery County to clean the Wissahickon Creek watershed on a regional basis through something called the Wissahickon Clean Water Partnership.
As many as 16 different municipalities from North Wales to Philadelphia are considering joining the effort, led by the Wissahickon Watershed Association, the Montgomery County Planning Commission and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
“The conversation you are having just tonight, is a conversation I am seeing in almost every municipal meeting I go to,” Authority Solicitor Vincent Pompo told the board, noting they are not alone in grappling with these issues.
But whether its a user fee or taxes – or whether action is taken next year or five years from now – the costs of dealing with the new stormwater rules and crumbling infrastructure are inevitable, said Authority Chairman Tom Carroll.
“We need to know what’s coming down the pipe and get a plan for it before the whole town caves in,” said Carroll.
Moving forward now, he argued, would allow Pottstown to gather the information it needs to create a five-year capital plan, similar to what the authority has done for the water and sewer systems, which allows for work to get done on a regular basis without borrowing money.
But moving forward will require a little legal tap-dancing.
The study Walker presented was undertaken as the result of a request from Pottstown Borough Council to begin to look into the matter.
Pompo pointed out that under current law, the only municipalities allowed to impose stormwater user fees are second class townships and municipal authorities.
That means since the borough government cannot impose the fee itself, council must decide whether to formally change the borough authority charter to expand its responsibilities to include stormwater, or form an entirely separate stormwater authority, Pompo said.
Which means, the authority board agreed, that Mark Flanders, who is both the borough manager and the authority manager, needs to take the report and the information to borough council for input and possible formal action.
