Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Tampa Tribune article on stormwater fees:
POLITICS
Hillsborough stormwater fees, unchanged for 23 years, set to double
Published: May 6, 2015 | Updated: May 7, 2015 at 07:31 AM
TAMPA — People who live in unincorporated areas of Hillsborough County will likely see their stormwater fees more than double starting next year.
Under a stormwater work plan approved by county commissioners Wednesday, owners of single-family home will see their yearly fee go from $12 to $30 starting in January. Apartment complexes, condominiums, cooperatives and townhouses will increase from the current $6 a year to $15. The fee increases still have to undergo a public hearing this summer.
For commercial and industrial properties, the annual fee will rise from 1 cent per 1.5 square feet of impervious surface to 2.5 cents.
If approved, the fee increases will be the first in 23 years. The money is needed to take care of a $60 million backlog in culvert repair and replacement, as well as 107 needed neighborhood stormwater projects costing $24 million. Altogether, the total stormwater backlog comes to $200 million when larger watershed projects to prevent flooding are included.
The proposed fee hike represents an increase of 2.5 times the current fee. The county’s Public Works Department had asked for an increase that would triple the current fee to $36 for a single-family home and to $18 for other residential properties.
Public Works Director John Lyons said the department’s proposed fee increase would take care of all 107 neighborhood projects and $50 million worth of the culvert repairs and replacement over the next five years.
But Commissioner Ken Hagan pushed for the lower increase saying he wanted to keep the county’s fee lower than the city of Tampa’s.
“Our current $12 fee simply puts us further and further behind the eight ball, and a dedicated and sustainable funding source is needed to eliminate the backlog,” Hagan said. “However, I’m not comfortable tripling our current fee.”
Commissioner Les Miller, a Democrat, pushed to adopt the staff’s recommended $36 fee, citing studies that project the county’s population to increase by half a million people over the next 10 years.
About 70 percent of those new residents will likely live in unincorporated Hillsborough, Miller said. With that kind of growth, the lower $30 fee would guarantee the county never catches up the drainage backlog.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we do not need the problems that some of these other counties are having throughout the state of Florida of this country because we are trying to be conservative and hold back on stormwater fees,” Miller said.
“We need to be prepared, we need to be proactive. We need to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of the people that are here now and those that are projected to come by 2025.”
Hagan was joined in voting for the lower fee by fellow Republicans Sandy Murman, Stacy White and Victor Crist.
Democrats Miller and Kevin Beckner were joined by Republican Al Higginbotham in voting against the lower fee. Higginbotham said he has talked to a number of people, especially Sun City Center residents, who were OK with the higher fee as long as their drainage problems were solved.
Here is other action taken Wednesday by the county commission:
♦ Approved four finalists for director of the county Environmental Protection Commission. A 13-member screening committee had submitted three candidates to the county commission: Rick Tschantz, the EPC’s general counsel, Scott Emery, EPC director of wetlands management and Mary Yeargan, director of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s southwest district.
But Emery dropped out of the competition on Monday citing health issues. So commissioners added Robert “Bob” Musser Jr., environmental projects manager at Port Everglades. Musser had finished in a tie with Emery when the screening committee was trimming seven finalists down to three. Emery was chosen in a tie-breaker vote.
Commissioners also added Janet Dougherty, president of Sage Eco Solutions, to the list because Commissioner Victor Crist said he wanted more people with private sector experience. Commissioners will make a final decision May 21.
♦ Awarded a contract for demolishing the Friendship Trail Bridge to America Bridge Co. at a guaranteed maximum price of $9.35 million. The project is to be completed by August 28, 2016. The Trail Bridge is a former span of the old Gandy Bridge that was converted to a 2.6 recreational trail in December 1999. In 2008, engineers discovered the bridge’s structural steel had deteriorated and it was closed. Attempts by bridge proponents to put together a public-private venture to revive the bridge failed.
♦ Agreed to provide $600,000 to the Hillsborough County Fair in Dover for enclosing a pavilion and buying mowers and tractors. The money will come out of a the county’s phosphate severance fund.
