Minutes - Council - 12/19/2000 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

retroactivity to the beginning of the charge. Staff recommended that any correspondence written prior to February 28, 2001, regarding requests for credits that are currently available entitles that property owner retroactivity. This is, of course, contingent upon successful approval of the credit application. This will give the City an opportunity to write an article in the January/February issue of the Ramsey Resident and process the requests before the next billing cycle. Mr. Gary Gruber from Diamonds Sports Bar had mentioned that there were other municipalities that gave credits up to 80%. Through past experience, staff knows this to be true, however, they do think the reason there is an opportunity for larger credits available to other municipalities stems from the land use structure that is used so often in the implementation of storm drainage utilities. Every property has distinguishing characteristics that sets itself apart from every other property in the City. When determining what a particular land use should pay per acre, there are assumptions that are made regarding percent impervious that are not necessary for Ramsey's utility. For example, the commercial/industrial land use typically is approximately 70-75% impervious and, therefore, gets a Residential Equivalence Factor around five. Diamond's Sports Bar has an impervious percentage of 20%, which is equivalent to a REF of 1.82 in Ramsey's system. Had Diamond's been in a City that used land use instead he would have started out with a quarterly fee of $2,096.64 instead of $763.06 which is 64 percept higher. This, along with the ponding credits available, would have given him an 82 percent credit from $2,096.64 leaving him with a quarterly charge of $377.40. His quarterly charge at the City of Ramsey is $381.53 (without the credit criteria for the modified method changing) and $212.31 (with change to the modified credit). City staff recommended that there be no change to the credit percentages in the existing resolution. As stated in the previous case to the City Council on November 14, 2000, the cost that can reasonably be expected to apply for a credit should be $200, $600, or $1,200, depending upon the level of information that the person has that is applying for the credit. This information comes directly form the Consultant that the City would hire if the decision were made to take on the responsibility of calculating these credits. This is also under the assumption that the information is provided to them. There is a direct correlation to the amount that would be charged and the time it takes to complete these tasks. Staff believes that although the existing credit application can be cumbersome, it clearly defines the criteria that enables a property to receive a credit. It is also reasonable to expect the property owner to supply the information necessary to justify that adjustment. In this manner, all of the property owners in the City are treated equally. If the responsibility of assigning credits comes to the City of Ramsey, there is a liability that someone was treated unfairly. This could also set the City up to be accountable for sometimes scarce information on prior developments. Councihnember Anderson inquired if the changes seem to satisfy the concerns that have been expressed by the business community. City Engineer Olson replied that it does to a point. He stated that one of the largest concerns he received fi'om the business community was that in order to apply for a credit they had to pay someone to do the calculations and the application was quite complicated. To address that concern, staff is proposing a pre-application form. At the November 21, 2000 Public Works Committee meeting, there was discussion of making a pre-application for the credits available for the storm drainage utility. This pre-application would be much easier to fill out and would City Council/December 19, 2000 Page 7 of 19