Prince George, B.C. – The storm water utility,  aimed at raising funds  for an aging  storm water drainage system  infrastructure,  is not likely to be  finalized by the current Mayor and Council.

Staff have been working on  coming up with a new  funding  formula,  one that would make it fair to all taxpayers, since  last May.  That was when the Finance and Audit committee called on staff to come back with a formula that  was  not as complicated. “Council said it needed to be  a simpler rate structure” says Gina Layte- Liston of the City’s Public Works Department “So administration has had to go back and look at how we can simplify that  structure  while still getting what is needed out of the utility.”

Reports to  Council  indicated the  utility would need about $3.8 million dollars  to  keep the more than 330kms of pipe, 1088 kms of ditches,  and  nearly 12 and half thousand culverts, in tip top shape.  Layte-Liston says  the  need for a special  utility to deal with storm water  issues is simple “We are finding the operation and maintenance budgets are not high enough to deal with all the maintenance and  operations.  But also, with our capital projects,  all of them are in the same pot as all the  other projects, where  if we have the utility it will sort of separate that out and  spending  from a storm water utility can only be  spent on storm water.”

So, if you are taking those  operations and capital projects out of the general operations  funds,  will that mean that side of the annual tax bill will be reduced accordingly? Layte-Liston was non committal on that  question “I can’t speculate on that,   that would be a Council decision.”

Originally, it was  proposed that  properties with  lots of impervious  areas ( roof, parking lots, driveways patios etc.) would pay more.  The  initial rate structure would see  single family dwelling’s  pay $100 dollars a year, Heavy Industry $5.5 thousand,  Large retail (with large parking lots) $10.5 thousand a year, and a downtown business pay  about $800 a year. But there were many “what ifs” presented to the City,  what if the homeowner uses rain barrels,  what if a business has it’s own catchment pond, what kind of  discounts would those circumstances  provide?

The initial plan  called for a credit system to be applied to  those properties which had special systems  installed in their properties to reduce the amount of run off  “there are a number of ways that over the  years people have been decreasing the amount of run off from  their properties” says Layte-Liston.

The  proposed utility has been under a lot of heat, as  the public has referred to it as “the rain tax”,  but Layte-Liston says that’s largely because  it is a complicated  issue that  is more difficult to explain to the public  “It’s not just about the rainwater that’s coming out of the sky and onto a piece of  property.  There’s many different things involved with the storm water system.  We have  large number of kilometers  of pipe in the ground, we have a large infrastructure system.  We have  the watershed that they (the run off ) go into, so all of our storm water system in Prince George  goes out to creeks  and rivers and streams so that is part of the infrastructure.  So when the rain falls and the snow melts and any other type of precipitation occurs, that stuff has to be dealt with.”  “That stuff is not just rainwater, but could include much more such as the soapy water that  runs off a driveway when  a person washes their  vehicle.

“There are  other communities throughout British Columbia and Alberta that have flat rate structures where everyone is charged the same amount” says Layte-Liston.  “There’s a full variety, you can go from  flat  rate structure that everybody gets one, right to  a, considered to be more complicated than what we were looking at, where every single home  looks at the impervious, or hard surfaces  on the piece of property and that’s something Edmonton does.”

She says while staff  thought they had presented a  middle of the road rate structure to Council  it was clear  “Even that can be difficult to communicate.”

Yes there is a municipal election just around the corner, but Layte-Liston says the development  of this  utility and its implementation  are not being delayed until after that vote “There is no delay , we are not putting it off until Spring , there will be that time taken to be working on it so it can come out in the proper way that finance and audit wanted  to work it.”

The new rate structure is still  under development, but  will not likely be  ready in time for it to be approved, a new bylaw developed  and ready to roll for the first of January.  It is more likely the rate structure will be presented to Finance and Audit  in the new year,  and the  utility in place for the late summer billing that is due in September.