" The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves. " William Shakespeare

Stormwater fee reworked,
not likely to be eliminated

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By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Apr 12, 2010 @ 10:16 PM
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FALL RIVER — A stormwater task force headed by Mayor Will Flanagan completed reviews and issued to the City Council last week an amended draft ordinance on sewer fees that the administration considers constitutional.

Corporation Council Steven Torres noted two sections he rewrote to pass what he and Flanagan considered “constitutional infirmities.” Flanagan campaigned for mayor saying he’d eliminate the “illegal rainwater tax.”

The issue came to a head in late January when the city needed to offset a $3.5 million sewer deficit in order to satisfy state revenue officials and mail tax bills.

Two key sections govern what fee payments can be used for and how building owners can “opt out” of paying them, Torres said.


Torres, along with Administrator of Public Utilities Terrance Sullivan, who helped draft the law, said those paying are not doing so for “general usage” of the stormwater system.
“It’s not to remedy the environmental ills of the watershed,” Torres said, stating such a designation would be a tax everyone should share in.


Rather, a “stormwater facility includes combined sewers, catch basins, storm drains, drainage pipes, culverts, streams, swales, wetlands, detention ponds and ponds that have control structures such as dams and gatehouses,” the ordinance says.


Moreover, a three-sentence opt-out provision says, “Properties that can eliminate stormwater discharge from their property, thus, not utilizing any city stormwater facilities, can be exempt from the fee.”


Those exemptions must be certified by an engineer delineating the stormwater on-site collection. They could include “on-site reclamation” and other technology, Torres said.


For citizens and businesses, the pending adoption and impact of the ordinance will control sewer rates and newly defined stormwater fees.

Needing to raise $3 million this fiscal year, the council voted 7-2 Jan. 26 to more than double the rates from $2.54 to $5.40 per 100 ccf of water for most users.

Stormwater fees remained $35 a quarter for 1-8-family homes. lessening the burden on multifamily home owners.

The purpose of the stormwater fee former Mayor Robert Correia initiated nearly two years ago was to redistribute costs toward commercial users with large impervious surfaces and pay the $185 million combined sewer overflow project.

About 88 percent of sewer revenues are residential.


Under four draft options Sullivan showed to raise $17.4 million in fiscal 2011, he had stormwater fees ranging from zero to $99 a quarter.


Under those options, the sewer rates ranged from $2.55 — what it had been before raising rates for this year’s sewer deficit — to $3.62 with a $75 quarterly stormwater fee and a $6.96 rate if there was no stormwater fee.


“That’s outrageous,” council President Joseph Camara said of higher rates.


“Keeping the stormwater intact ($35 a quarter) and paying what we’re paying the last year (since Jan. 26) is extremely high,” Camara said of the current $5.40 rate.


Camara, who along with Vice President Linda Pereira voted against the sewer deficit ordinance, said he believes the sewer division is collecting “so much extra money” than needed at the higher rate.

“We’re progressing well,” Sullivan said of $2.9 million needed by June 30.


“It’s a tight time frame,” he said, stating that delinquent payers issued liens are paying those bills, helping to balance the budget. The other $600,000 of the sewer deficit would be recouped next year.

Flanagan appointed Camara and councilors Eric Poulin, Brian Bigelow and Michael Lund to serve on the task force, with the latter dropping out and Poulin missing one of the two public meetings because of a council committee conflict. They were held Feb. 24 and March 10.

“If the Law Department is comfortable that it now passes legal muster, then I’m fine with that,” Poulin said.

“My concern is to get back to the rate of $2.55. My goal is to close the gap,” Poulin said.


Bigelow noted the separate ordinance added a benefit that high-volume users could install effluent meters to measure if their water discharge was lower than their water intake. That could help laundries, as one example.


“It doesn’t look like there’s a win situation anywhere,” Bigelow said of the rates. “It looks like we’ll have to keep the stormwater fee.”


He’s recommending Flanagan call a third task force meeting to review and iron out the draft ordinance.


This was preordained. As stated on this blog months ago when this issue first came to the fore, and during the campaign last year, I had made concrete statements that the CSO fee was here to stay and needed to keep the sewer enterprise find operations  as much in the black as possible. In fact I wondered if the City had made the rate(s) high enough to provide working capital fund and reserve fund, which is essential in a sewer or water enterprise fund. I'm sure right now they have not done so. And they are still having to carry forward $600,000 of FY10 defecit into FY11.

Is this a repudiation of the "Promise" made by Mayor Flanagan during his campaign for Mayor. Well, yes, how could it not be? But it's a necessity for the City and no matter how you look at this, the amount of money reflected in the CSO and regular Sewer rates is an unavoidable burden. I know it hurts and couldn't come at a worse time for most people, but there you have it. The only thing most people can do now is to understand you need to press ANY politician for REAL facts and REAL answers.

Most politicians run for office with every good intention of being capable, competent, trustworthy and honest. But the fact remains that the largest portion of the electorate is not prepared, ever, to hear the truth about their municiplaity and the problems it has, and most critically, the solutions to those problems, which are all bound to hit your pocketbooks and wallets. It has always been this way everywhere.

So why be upset with a politician who makes claims that he has the solution to a problem and that solving them will cost little, or even nothing? Remember the old addage "If it sounds to good to be true, it probably isn't"? Well that applies to ANY politician running for any office.

What I am saying is you should never have been surprised that this Sewer rate/CSO charge would be solved in the way proposed by the Special Committee. The questions were asked about where the money to cover enterprise fund operations would come from when they eliminated the fee! Do you mean to tell me that after years of living in Fall River you still blindly believe this collection of sociopaths and professional liars we all call local politicans? That is naive stupidity. How more plainly can it be stated.

It's not the politicians fault. They know what lines you'll fall for, what issues need to be stressed and how much leeway they have in not telling you the truth to motivate you into voting for them. That's because you tell them what to say by whose stories you voted for in prior elections. They PLAN to make non-commital statements and deal in platitudes rather than tackle real issues. They PLAN to make outrageous promises they don't have a clue about being able to make happen. It's called POLITICS for a reason. Otherwise it would have to be called the fine art of TRUTHING instead. You tell me the last time a politician anywhere told the absolute truth about what he thought and how he planned on making a positive difference! You can't, because those people would never be elected to any office. It applies to both democrats and republicans. I think in the case of local politics the Jack Nicholson line applies nicely - "YOU CAN"T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

This whole story is YOUR fault. I'm not saying Mayor Flanagan is a bad guy, because I don't believe he is, and I think he'll eventually get things going in the right direction.
But there were far too many people not interested enough to heed the warnings, to do the legwork and research to figure out if he, or any of the top people in his campaign had a clue about municipal finances and how they operate, and what was really going on with the City's financial condition. Those in Fall River having a background in finance and budgeting knew the Flanagan campaign was clueless in this area. He may deny that, but he knows that what I just wrote is the truth. And nobody who followed what the City's finances were like believed a word out his mouth when it came to sewer rates and highering back all the people laid off by The Great Destroyer Correia. (And don't think Correia knew any more public finance than Flanagan...he didn't). That's just the way it was, and is.

The burden on electing good candidates is yours. The burden of finding out whether the things these candidates say is true is yours. If you are reading this blog then you have the means of putting their statements and platforms to the test. If you fail to understand the person running for office and demanding answers to specific questions, you are a fool.

Politicains begin to morph into full blown sociopaths very quickly. It's the nature of the business. They are merely adapting to the circumstance by giving you answers you WANT to hear, by appealing to the biggest concentration of like minded people they can in order to construct the most favorable picture . They follow YOUR behaviors by seeing who was elected and what they said during their successful campaigns.

You have to look at electing a politician with your vote like trying to prevent someone from stealing your financial information from the internet. Protect what you have. Question everything these people say and do not accept easy, well rehearsed and facile answers. If you think some specific candidate is handing you a line of crapola, and you get that suspicious feeling in your gut when you hear what they have to say when questioned, the person is PROBABLY feeding you a line of crapola. Take the same attitude to statements and claims made by politicians  as you would if your 15 year old son came home at 2 A.M. smelling of booze. I know you'd stay up until sunrise to get answers out of him, and you'd be right to do so. So why would you not question the claims made by people who will have a partial control over your finances in the form of tax assesments , charges and various fees? I don't get it. Smarten up Fall River!

It's too late to change your mind once the person has won the election. Reading the statements of the coalition of the miserable and feeble minded in  the comments section of the Herald News for this article, that Flanagan's already lost the next election because he "BROKE" a promise to get rid of the CSO fee is laughable. You folks wanted him more then anyone else. Your disappointment is your own fault. You didn't do your homework and gave your votes to a man who never claimed he knew how to fix the problem, only that he'd kill off what he thought was an illegal tax. A simple reading of the even more simple legal analysis would have shown you this claim was based on extremely tenuous reasoning. It was doomed before the election was finished. But you voted for him anyway.

Again, I'm not at all saying Mayor Flanagan is a bad guy - he isn't as far as I 've seen and heard. But average voters in Fall River.....look in the mirror for all the bad things these other politicians are doing to you....look hard and see if you like what you see...and if you'll get suckered ever again?