Petitioning City Hall

[Hugh R]

So I get a notice from the city that they want to raise every residents Stormwater pollution prevention fee. They want to more than quadruple them. Mine would go from $130 to over $550 annually. I looked at the calculations and find that my property is classified as Single Family Residence-Rural. Which is probably correct. However for SFR-R they assume 44% of the land is impervious, probably not a bad assumption for most houses that have 1/2 acre or more, when you consider the footprint of the house, patio, driveway, etc. The problem is that I have 17.62 acres and that's over 750,000 square feet of land. At most, my house, pool, patio and driveway are 9,000 square feet, or around 1.2% impervious, not 44%. I want them to re-classify me as vacant land, or some other designation, so I wrote a letter to city hall to protest. I believe my current fee should be closer to $36 annually.

Incidentially a 10 acre golf course is estimated to have 2% impervious land, and would only pay about $100/year. Golf courses have parking lots, club houses, proshops, and other impervious surfaces.

I'll keep you posted. Somehow I think I''ll have to get more large landowners involved.

[Zeke]

Stormwater pollution prevention fee. That's a good one. Tell them if it ever rains, you might play.

[jyl]

Is the fee determined by acreage (e.g. 17 in your case) as well as type of property (e.g. SFR-R)? Or just type of property?

[red-beard]

Our ground here is almost 100% impervious.

[Tobra]

Good luck with that. One question, are the people making this determination the same ones that are getting the dough?

[Hugh R]

JYL

Fee is determined by acreage. In my case, they assume 10% impervious which is stupid. I have 3/4 of a million square feet of property and only about 1.2% is developed. It's mostly hilly and brush.

Tobra, yeah, fighting city hall, and yes, they get the money. My strategy is to make my problem a lot of peoples problem. I'm contacting locals who have large pieces of property.

[Tobra]

strength in numbers, call a TV station maybe

[Porsche-O-Phile]

You're San Bernardino, right?

I might have a soils report for a job I did out that way which indicates that pretty much the entire area is an alluvial basin (wash) which means VERY little (if any) percolation of surface water into underground rivers or aquifers.

The whole thing is just a B.S. way of levying a new tax/fee on honest folks in order to fund government waste and handouts to recipients of wealth-redistribution/social engineering programs anyway (but I'm sure you already know this).

In my experiences, getting City of San B. to budge on ANYTHING is a complete uphill battle. Their city engineering department has one of the worst God complexes I've ever run into although their water department was surprisingly easy to deal with. Good luck with it.

[HardDrive]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

In my experiences, getting City of San B. to budge on ANYTHING is a complete uphill battle. Their city engineering department has one of the worst God complexes I've ever run into although their water department was surprisingly easy to deal with. Good luck with it.

'God complexes'? Where do you people live?

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

In my experiences, getting City of San B. to budge on ANYTHING is a complete uphill battle. Their city engineering department has one of the worst God complexes I've ever run into although their water department was surprisingly easy to deal with. Good luck with it.

Worse than programmers?

[ckissick]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

'God complexes'? Where do you people live?

That's a rhetorical question, right?

[berettafan]

Originally Posted by red-beard

Worse than programmers?

about the same but without the dungeons & dragons/star trek background.

[The Gaijin]

$550 a year in what is basically a hidden tax? Huge scam.

Have all hard surfaces drain into a livestock tank and use that for flushing and watering.

Then pay them nothing.

[berettafan]

Figure out two things:

1-how much revenue this will generate
2-WHO specifically will be paying what (by class ie industry, residential, ag, etc) and in what proportion

With this info you will see what city hall already knows and you will gain insight into who they really wanted to pay this new tax.

THIS info is what you want to hand to local media if necessary.

I'm curious why they didn't just raise sewer rates. This would seem the obvious thing to do. Perhaps your public services commission (or whatever regulatory agency you have) said 'no' so they had to do an end run around the system. THIS would be key to putting the smack down on this new 'tax'. There is a reason it is worded like it is. Find out why.

[berettafan]

btw, you have to put the brakes on this stuff as early as possible before too many 'important' people get behind it. if it gets too far you'll never stop it because 'the chosen ones' will suffer a loss of face.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

You're San Bernardino, right?

I might have a soils report for a job I did out that way which indicates that pretty much the entire area is an alluvial basin (wash) which means VERY little (if any) percolation of surface water into underground rivers or aquifers.

The whole thing is just a B.S. way of levying a new tax/fee on honest folks in order to fund government waste and handouts to recipients of wealth-redistribution/social engineering programs anyway (but I'm sure you already know this).

In my experiences, getting City of San B. to budge on ANYTHING is a complete uphill battle. Their city engineering department has one of the worst God complexes I've ever run into although their water department was surprisingly easy to deal with. Good luck with it.

I think Hugh is close to Santa Clarita. And, I don't think a lack of percolation is going to help his cause. What they are worried about is runoff carrying fertilizers and animal feces, etc..

Or did I miss something?

[Hugh R]

POP

Milt is correct, I'm in Santa Clarita (North of downtown LA by about 20 miles). The City is trying to raise the sewer fees as well, because they too high a salt content in the treatment plant effluent due to many people having salt water softeners. I need to get the word out to other large landowners in the area.

[craigster59]

I have the same problem with my house in Fillmore. The water is VERY hard and had a softener installed years ago. Now they want to charge a sewer fee of approximately $200 a month for discharging salt into the Santa Clara River. This fee is to help build a new sewage treatment facility that is badly needed due to the fact of all the new construction that was built from 1995-2007.

I say let Newhall Land and Farming pay for it, seeing how their business is comprised of 15% farming, 85% development.

[Jim Bremner]

It might be a hell of alot cheaper to pay the people who should be tared and feathered than to invite them into your life.

[The Gaijin]

Tar and feathers. Oh Man. We need more of that.