Stormwater fees in Hampton may rise
Fees would be $10.83 a month if city budget provision is approved
Hampton’s budget season has shifted into gear with the usual public conversations, but one engagement feature for residents — online polling — has been scaled down this year.
For more than a decade, it was a way for residents to rank what they wanted to see funded. That’s a harder question to answer this year, as commercial revenues have fallen during the pandemic.
“And that means less money for those sources to fund city services. So, this is not a year where we will be polling residents on new city services that they might want to see, because
that’s not going to be something that we’re really in the position to do until the economy fully recovers from the pandemic,” City Manager Mary Bunting said. “But we absolutely do want to hear from the public about their thoughts as to the city services they care most about ... is it important enough to go ahead and bite the bullet and do an increase ... or do we prefer to wait?”
The Hampton council heard another round of budget items Wednesday to consider before Bunting presents her recommended budget April 15.
This session focused on potential increases for wastewater and stormwater fees, the latter that has increased steadily by $1 every year since 2019. With that extra money collected, the city plans to pay for several projects aimed at flood mitigation as part of its
Resilient Hampton endeavor.
Public works manager Jason Mitchell outlined a timeline for the next several years — for this budget cycle, stormwater fees would rise to $10.83 a month. With the annual $1 increase, stormwater fees would be $15.83 by 2027. On alternate years, beginning this fiscal cycle, 80% of those collected fees would be devoted to managing stormwater issues outside of the targeted Resilient Hampton areas, to mitigating flooding in other neighborhoods.
Mitchell said the department planned to use $1.5 million from its reserves — currently at $6.9 million — to keep fee increases level each year and still have reserves for necessary capital projects. Without taking this approach, the reserves would be depleted by 2024, he said.
Bunting said the council has choices. If it did not want to do the dollar increase each year, it could use more of the reserves and “keep some of those capital projects in play,” she said.
Wastewater fees and surcharges also are proposed to tack on an additional $4.07 to a user’s monthly bill, Mitchell said. Solid waste fees would not be going up this year.
Hampton will host Facebook Live Q &A beginning at 7 p.m. March 18 and March 25. A noon session takes place Monday, March 22. For residents that do not have internet or who are not on Facebook, chats will be rebroadcast on Hampton TV, Cox 47: Verizon Fios channel 22, officials said. Bunting said she welcomes setting up sessions with individual neighborhood groups.
The full recommended budget will be released next month. Public hearings during council meetings take place on April 28 and May 5, with the council set to vote on the budget May 12.