Minutes - Council - 10/10/2000 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Motion carried. Voting Yes: Mayor Gamec, Councilmembers Anderson, Hendriksen, Connolly, and Zimmerman. Voting No: None. Case #2: Continuation of Discussion of the Storm Drainage Utility City Engineer Olson stated that the Council adopted Ordinance #00-01 creating a storm drainage utility on January 11, 2000. Pursuant to Ordinance #00-01, the Council adopted Resolution #00- 06-165 establishing the storm drainage utility rates and charges. On July 25, 2000, the Council adopted Ordinance #00-10 which Ordinance amended Ordinance #00-01. Pursuant to City Council direction on September 26, 2000, staff reviewed the runoff calculations for Ve-Ve, Inc. located at 14047 Azurite Street NW, as it relates to a single family residential home that has 2,500 square feet of impervious area. Ve-Ve, Inc. is located on the property that is 2.08 acres in size. According to the aerial photograph, it has an impervious area, which includes compacted gravel parking areas, equal to 65,044 square feet. This amounts to over 26 times more impervious area than a residential property with 2,500 square feet of impervious area. Ve-Ve, Inc. has a storm drainage utility fee of $185.98 per quarter and a residential parcel has a storm drainage utility fee of $6.30 per quarter. Ve-Ve, Inc. pays approximately 29 times more than a residential property. Another issue that arose during the public hearing was the question of why the City can't collect this on the property tax levy. The premise behind the storm drainage utility is that the property that produces more of the problem pays more of the costs associated with the storm sewer. Mr. Olson reviewed some graphs that illustrated the impacts to single family residential property owners of collecting this money by the property taxes. Although commercial and industrial property pay a higher tax than residential property, they only pay for approximately 27% of the property tax levy and residential property taxes pay approximately 72%. Under the storm drainage utility, commercial and industrial property pay for approximately 57% and residential property produces 43% of the costs of maintaining the storm sewer system. If the money collected through the storm drainage utility was collected with the tax levy and as a function of the property value, the residential community would pick up an additional $98,000. Since there is approximately 5,600 residential properties throughout the City of Ramsey, this equates to an additional $17.50 per residence on average. Based on revenue/expenditure projection along with the need for a dedicated source of revenue for storm sewer projects throughout the City, City staff recommended that the rates remain as previously presented. John Vevea, Ve-Ve Incorporated, stated that he came to the last meeting to try to show how unfair the dollar amounts are that the Council is asking the businesses to pay on the square foot of impervious ground in relationship to what a home owner was paying per square foot of impervious ground. He gave an example not based on fact, but based on square footage amounts he thought was fair. He said a homeowner on average might have 2,500 square feet of impervious area, and Ve-Ve, Inc. has 25,000 square feet (knowing they have 16,000 square feet of building and maybe 9,000 square feet of black top). With this example he said if they had 10 times the area, they should only be paying 10 times more, but they are paying 36 times more. City Council/October 10, 2000 Page 5 of 17