Franklin Matters: Stormwater Utility Fee Recommendations

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Stormwater Utility Fee Recommendations

Document shared with the Finance Committee meeting on Jan 13, 2021 as a preview of the discussion coming up at a Town Council meeting soon.

Re: Stormwater Utility Recommendations

Dear Jamie,

Based on discussions, thoughts, and conversations of data presented over three meetings to the Town Council Stormwater Ad-hoc Committee a vote was taken on September 9th, 2020, of said committee, to present to the full Franklin Town Council the following findings and recommendations. These findings and recommendations are needed to implement a stormwater fee and program as previously established in the Town Charter and as required by federal law under the MS4 Permit.

Set the stormwater user fee at $18.66 per billing unit, per year: This would mean the fee for an “average single family household” (with 3 billing units) would be $56.00 per year, and billed at $14.00 per quarter.

The fee would begin on January 1st, 2022.

The public may go to this website and review their personal property, how many billing units for their land and estimate the fee impact. Stormwater & Impervious Area Map.

Billing Units: The available billing units were updated and recalculated using natural rounding (after the first 1000 square feet (SF). Some additional points:

●    Properties with less than 200 SF are considered undeveloped and will not be billed a fee (as defined in the Stormwater Utility By-law, Section 153-21).

●    For properties with impervious area of 200 SF to 1,499 SF, they will be assigned one billing unit.

●    Since the Stormwater Utility By-law defines an individual billing unit equal to one thousand (1,000) square feet of impervious surface, each increase of 1,000 SF will increase the number of billing units by 1.

Stormwater Information Sessions/Ad-Hoc Committee meetings: