Murrysville officials continued to hammer out the shape of a credit program for the town’s recently imposed stormwater fees, with much of the focus on larger, commercial properties.
“I think my biggest concern remains that, under the current proposal, it’s not really incentivizing nonresidential property owners all that much to do these best-management practices,” Korns said.
The stormwater fee program imposes a $7 monthly fee on the vast majority of residential properties, working out to $84 per year. The most likely discount would be a one-time $40 credit for installing a rain barrel.
Larger single-family properties sitting on 3 or more acres, as well as non-residential and commercial properties, would be eligible for a credit up to 35% for various best-management practices such as catch basins, swales, permeable pavement or rain gardens.
“There’s not a lot of incentive if a property is able to reduce their stormwater runoff by 50%, but they’re only getting a maximum 35% credit,” Korns said.
Councilwoman Jamie Lingg agreed.
“If we’re giving this credit, that means we’ll be bringing in less revenue,” she said.
Murrysville Chief Administrator Michael Nestico said aligning the credit program with the need for stormwater project funds was the “tricky” balance they were trying to achieve.
“The estimates our consultant came up with showed we’d generate about $1 million per year that could all be put toward addressing stormwater issues,” Nestico said. “The delicate balance is that the more lucrative you make those credits, the more it cuts into the source of revenue for the program.”
Mayor Dayne Dice objected to calling the funds “revenue.”
“It’s a fee,” he said. “Every single dollar of this is going toward stormwater remediation.”
Dice and several other council members said they would like to have consultants Lennon Smith Souleret Engineering attend a future meeting to discuss the credit program in more detail.
“They let us know they’ve done these ordinances everywhere,” Dice said. “That’s part of why we chose them to help us with it. I think there’s enough questions about the data we’ve received that I think we need LSSE to provide us with a little more information.”
Council consensus was that LSSE’s information should include a few scenarios for what a credit program could look like.
“I think it would be great to have them run some mock scenarios,” Council President Mac McKenna said. “I think that would help a lot with our discussions here.”
Council also voted unanimously to move ahead with a request for proposals to find a company to handle billing for stormwater fees.
“We don’t do very much fee collection in the municipality, and we certainly don’t do any significant volume of billing,” Nestico said. “We want to explore what options we have and what those costs may be.”
Councilmen Matthew Olszewski and Jason Lemak were not present.
