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Proposed new fee to combat Tampa street flooding heads for key vote

 
Scenes like this — in July 2011 when Dr. Husain Nagamia had to leave his BMW in a flooded intersection — are all too common in Tampa. But city officials say a proposed stormwater improvement assessment would help pay for a solution. 
Scenes like this — in July 2011 when Dr. Husain Nagamia had to leave his BMW in a flooded intersection — are all too common in Tampa. But city officials say a proposed stormwater improvement assessment would help pay for a solution. 
Published Aug. 26, 2016

TAMPA

For the second straight year, the City Council on Thursday will consider creating a new fee to pay for an ambitious plan to lessen the chronic street flooding Tampa sees from a heavy summer thunderstorm.

And this time, officials hope it passes.

Last year, the council voted to raise the existing fee that pays to clean out ditches and ponds, sweep streets and unplug storm drain outfalls that empty into Tampa Bay. The annual property assessment rose from $36 to $82 per year for owners of medium-sized houses, and the city has used the additional money for more frequent maintenance.

But the council balked at the second part of Mayor Bob Buckhorn's proposal, despite support from some South Tampa neighborhood leaders. The council voted 4-3 against creating a separate, new assessment to pay for drainage improvements. Real estate agents, car lots and some property owners in Ybor City opposed it, and several council members said it would put too heavy a burden on low- or fixed-income homeowners.

In response, City Hall is proposing changes to address opponents' concerns.

First, instead of relying solely on the assessment, officials propose to spend $20 million from the city's share of the Community Investment Tax, a voter-approved half-cent sales tax designed to pay for public projects.

As a result, the proposed new fee would start at $45 per year for the owner of a medium-sized home, rising over six years to $89.55 per year. By comparison, under the plan rejected last year, a medium-sized home would have paid $98 per year.

Next, they created a hardship program to pay the new improvement assessment for older homeowners who are disabled or are disabled veterans and whose incomes do not exceed set limits.

Last, they made it easier for property owners to apply for a mitigation credit to lower either the maintenance or the improvement assessment because their property was designed so that water didn't flow into the street when it rained.

• • •

To council member Harry Cohen, whose district includes low-lying neighborhoods in South Tampa, street flooding is an issue he hears about virtually whenever it rains hard, "and it's only getting worse."

"If you live in South Tampa or if you live in probably 50 percent of the rest of the city, any time that it rains you go out, and you know that you basically have to go through an obstacle course to get through the city and find your way around the flooded streets," he recently told a South Tampa political group.

"Not to take away from the other issues that are facing our community, but we know this is a big one, and we really need to tackle it, and this is going to be our last chance," he said.

The plan would pay for five big projects and about 150 smaller ones, costing a total of $251 million. The major projects consist of:

• $40 million for work in the upper South Tampa peninsula, including putting in three box culverts to improve drainage around where S Dale Mabry Highway intersects with Henderson Boulevard and Neptune Street as well as areas to the west.

• $5 million to create new ponds for a basin centered near Linebaugh Avenue and 19th Street in the University area.

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• $40 million to install major box culverts on Cass and Cypress streets to resolve flooding in areas west of the Hillsborough River and south of Columbus Drive.

• $30 million for flood relief in Southeast Seminole Heights.

• $75 million to address issues in the lower South Tampa peninsula south of Euclid Avenue.

For two of the projects — the one for the upper South Tampa peninsula and the one for Cypress Street — the city is seeking $27 million in grants to help pay for the work, but officials say they need the assessment revenue to match the state funds.

• • •

As proposed, the new improvement assessment would not affect every part of the city. Areas north of E Fowler Avenue, MacDill Air Force Base and parts of Harbour Island would be exempt. That's because their drainage systems have already been designed and built to discharge water away from the city's storm drains.

For houses, the city created four tiers of fees, for small, medium, large and very large houses. Each tier is based on the estimated amount of impervious surfaces — not only buildings, but decks, swimming pools, driveways and walkways on each property. The more concrete, the higher the tier, and the more the homeowner pays.

City officials say they have worked to make the assessments as fair as possible, short of tailoring each one to match the size of every house in the city.

"To be exact, we would have to measure the impervious area for all 80,000-plus parcels, which is impractical to do every year," said Brad Baird, the city's top utilities administrator. "In lieu of that, we came up with a tier system that is supported by a statistical analysis."

Still, the plan has its critics.

In her North Tampa neighborhood, Temple Terraces, retired University of South Florida computer professional Martha Orchard says she can afford the fee, but she worries that some of her neighbors can't.

Orchard, 70, has a couple of other criticisms. First, she says, finding the application for a mitigation credit online is harder than it should be. Also, it doesn't seem fair to her that her home, assessed for taxes at $146,000, sits on a large lot — nearly an acre — that allows water to soak directly into the ground, but she's looking at the same assessment as for some South Tampa homes on smaller lots with three times the value.

Better, she believes, would be to base the fee on the home's value, not the amount of water it is estimated to discharge.

Renee Campion, who owns a home near N Habana Avenue and W Kennedy Boulevard, has argued in a couple of letters to the city that the assessment is "unfair and punitive." That's because if someone, like her, owns a home that's smaller than the median home in its assigned tier and has less paved surface than the tier assumes, then he or she ends up paying for impervious surface that doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, she says, a home‑ owner at the top of the same tier gets a break because he or she has more impervious surface than the median on which the tier is centered. And, she contends, the richest residents with the very biggest houses — picture, she says, retired New York Yankees star Derek Jeter's mansion on Davis Islands, which has a little less square footage than a typical Best Buy — end up with more paved surface than even the very large tier assumes, so they get a break that everyone else in the city doesn't.

• • •

To Randy Pattillo of Riverside Heights, the city's priorities are out of order. He notes that City Hall is spending $35.5 million — including $15 million from the city's BP oil spill settlement — on redeveloping Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park. Those monies should be committed to needs like stormwater first, he says.

"These touchy-feely good projects should be done after the infrastructure projects and only when funds are available," Pattillo says.

The point about using BP funds comes up fairly often. But the city's total BP settlement was $20 million — less than a 10th of the cost of the whole proposed drainage improvement program.

Buckhorn says the extra maintenance made possible by increasing the maintenance assessment has helped storm drains flow more freely.

But, he says, to put in bigger pipes and create the capacity needed to improve notorious trouble spots like Dale Mabry and Henderson, the city needs the additional revenue that would be generated by the proposed fee for improvements.

"If we want a significant impact, we've got to have this stormwater assessment," he says. "Absent this, there won't be many stormwater improvements."

Contact Richard Danielson at rdanielson@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3403. Follow @Danielson_Times