The San Juan County Council’s Stormwater Subcommittee has drafted a plan to finance a county-wide stormwater utility. Next week, meetings will be held on Lopez, Orcas and San Juan Islands to provide information and receive public input on its proposal to re-establish and fund a stormwater utility. The ordinance establishing the previous Stormwater Utility was overturned in a referendum election last November.
A stormwater utility funding plan is a required element for compliance with the state’s Growth Management Act (GMA).
“The subcommittee has spent nearly nine months studying and debating the Utility’s mission and different means of funding it,” said Subcommittee chair Rich Peterson, “and I think we have come up with something that addresses the county’s needs as well as the citizens’ concerns that were expressed in the referendum.”
The proposal’s detailed outline calls for the utility to be funded by a fee structure that includes a flat-rate fee to cover the cost of the utility’s administration, drainage basin studies and a program to help landowners reduce run-off and comply with stormwater regulation requirements. A second portion of the fee will cover the capital cost of constructing infrastructure to handle stormwater.
The San Juan County Council’s Stormwater Subcommittee has scheduled meetings for Lopez Island on Wednesday, Oct. 8, from 4 to 5:30 p.m., at the Lopez Island Public Library. The meeting on Orcas Island will be Thursday, Oct. 9, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Orcas Island Senior Center, 62 Henry Road, Eastsound.
In addition to Peterson, the Stormwater Subcommittee includes Council Members Howie Rosenfeld and Gene Knapp. It was formed shortly after voters overturned the previous Stormwater Utility Ordinance in November of 2007.
The Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board has found San County not in compliance with the Growth Management Act for its failure to develop a funding plan to assure storm water management facilities are completed in Eastsound and Lopez Village. The County Council earlier this year avoided threatened sanctions by approving authority to borrow up to $2 million from the County road fund to finance capital stormwater projects in Eastsound. At the time that authority was approved, the sense of the Council was that a stormwater fee structure would be in place before money had to be borrowed.
The legal text of the proposed ordinance is currently being revised by the County Prosecutor. Additional information about the proposal and the need to manage surface and stormwater is available on the county website at http://sanjuanco.com/docs/stormwater_proposal.pdf
The County Treasurer’s office has advised the Council that it needs to adopt the fee structure by early-to-mid-November in order for the fees to appear on the county’s 2009 property tax bills.
