Burlington’s leaders have opened the sluices to begin the gradual overhaul of a monthly utility fee that, for years, has bankrolled the city’s efforts to manage rainwater runoff and flooding.
In a 4-to-0 decision on Tuesday, Burlington’s city council signed off on a new rate structure for this so-called stormwater fee, or “rain tax” as it’s colloquially known to many of the city’s utility customers. The council has agreed to phase in this new structure over a period of five years in the hope that it will leave regular homeowners feeling less “soaked” as the cost burden for the city’s stormwater program shifts to commercial and industrial property owners.
As a prelude to this new structure, the council has also agreed to reduce the fee from $7 to $6 a month – with the lower rate slated to take effect on July 1 of this year.
According to Amy Barber, the city’s assistant water resources director, these various changes stem from the city’s long-standing recognition that there was something inherently unfair in its one-size-fits-all approach to the stormwater fee.
“The proposed fee is driven by inequities that we’re seeing across the city,” Barber explained ahead of Tuesday’s decision. “A lot of businesses with large impervious areas are contributing more to the rainwater runoff but paying the same amount as the residents.”
In order to shake up the status quo, the city hired the consulting firm Raftelis to propose a new, more equitable fee structure for the stormwater program.
As part of its remit, the company calculated the typical amount of “impervious surface” for a single-family dwelling in Burington. Raftelis had focused on impervious surfaces, which include water resistant structures like pavement and roofing, precisely because they hinder the natural drainage of rainwater. As a result, these materials allow rainwater to stagnate and mix with pollutants. They also contribute to the flooding that’s endemic in parts of the city.
Raftelis went on to use its estimate of a typical household’s impervious surface as the base unit for a new kind of fee structure. Under this new structure, each single-family home will continue to pay the current flat rate. Meanwhile, non-residential parcels will be assessed a new charge based on their impervious surface – which will be calculated in multiples of what Raftelis has ascribed to the average single-family home. A business that has roughly the same amount of impervious surface as 10 residences will, therefore, pay 10 times the base rate of $6 a month.
As a courtesy to non-residential property owners, the city council has agreed to phase in the new rates over a five-year period so that the full force of the cost increase won’t hit them all at once. Under the council’s implementation plan, non-residential property owners will begin paying the new fees at one-fifth of their assessed rates on January 1, 2027. The fees increase in increments of 20 percent a year until they reach their full value at the beginning of 2031.
The council has also instructed staff members to offer credits worth up to 40 percent of the total bill for a particular parcel whose owner has implemented their own stormwater controls.
In addition to realigning the cost burden of Burlington’s stormwater fees, the new fee structure is expected to bring in an additional $1.8 million to the city’s stormwater program during the five-year period of phased implementation. City officials intend to use these extra funds to bankroll bigger, more ambitious infrastructure improvements than they could’ve otherwise undertaken with the proceeds from a flat stormwater fee.
Yet, for much of the council, the chief selling point of the new free structure has been its presumably more equitable distribution of costs among the city’s utility customers.
“We think that this will be very fair,” Bob Ward, the city’s mayor pro tem declared before Tuesday’s vote, “and we know that what we have had was not fair.”
The council went on to hold a public hearing on the new fee structure that drew nary a peep from the city’s residents. Councilman Ian Baltutis nevertheless consoled his colleagues with a reminder that the new fee structure may finally address some of the residential flooding that has previously come to the council’s attention.
“While we did not have any public comments tonight,” he observed, “we have heard numerous comments and stories from people who have been dealing with floodwaters in their backyards over the years.”
The council went on to vote 4-to-0 for the new fee structure. Mayor Beth Kennett was absent from the vote as well as the rest of Tuesday’s proceedings.
