Waterloo revamps stormwater fees to address inequity

WATERLOO — The City of Waterloo is making changes to its stormwater fee program to deal with unfair rates.

Councillors heard the results of a review on Monday of both fees the city charges property owners for stormwater and a credit program for property owners who install stormwater management measures.

“There’s certainly a benefit to identifying fairness and this is one of many continual improvement exercises staff undertake to make sure that we have programs that are reasonable, that are effective and that are fair,” Coun. Jeff Henry said.

Angela McLean, engineering technologist, said there are some issues of equity in the stormwater rates.

The first issue is the large residential rate for stormwater fees. It’s out of whack, MacLean said, and should be frozen until 2021 to level out with the medium and small rates.

“We feel that the residential large is out of alignment with the other, so staff are recommending to freeze the residential large rates until they come back into alignment in 2021,” she said.

Residential large property owners currently pay $120 more annually than property owners in the medium category, MacLean said.

Overall residential properties currently pay between $67.32 and $223.32 annually in fees, according to a staff report.

A second issue is in the multi-residential and industrial, commercial and institutional rates. Staff will investigate changing those rate calculations to provide a more accurate fee.

Staff said if changed 71 per cent, or 1,070 non-residential properties, would see no change or a decrease in their fees and 444 properties, about 29 per cent would see an increase. Of those, 170 would see significant monthly increases of between $25 and $100.

Waterloo implemented its stormwater fee program in 2011 and its credit program in 2013.

Freezing the residential large rate means there will be $1 million less in the city’s stormwater reserve by 2021. However, staff said the stormwater reserve can handle it and

will have a balance of about $610,000 in 2021.

“How will this decreased funding impact the things that are in our capital plan,” Mayor Dave Jaworsky said.

Staff said the current capital plan, including planned rehabilitation of Silver Lake, won’t be affected.

Stormwater fees help pay for large projects such as rehabilitation of stormwater ponds, but also help pay for more common work such as street sweeping, leaf collection, ditch and culvert inspections and catch basin and manhole repair.

Staff didn’t recommend any changes to the city’s stormwater credit program.

Since the program launched in 2013, just 2,044 properties have taken advantage, with numbers peaking at 849 households in 2013 and declining each year to 389 last year.

Residential stormwater credits range between $6 and $100 annually. Other highlights:

Residents in neighbourhoods including Country Squire who don’t receive city stormwater management services will continue to receive credits from the city. Those credits will now be applied automatically by the city.

Multi-account properties will be billed differently. Instead of dividing the bill up evenly among the number of account holders at the property, the city will bill the property owner, who can divvy up the charges. The change will impact 1,700 accounts on 320 properties.

The multi-residential and non-residential credit program will be reviewed now as part of reworking those rate structures.