Town taxes should cover stormwater fee

I was confused by the new stormwater fees added to our utility bills this year. It seemed to me that the formula should have factored in the overall property size, since a larger property should be able to absorb more of the runoff from the impervious coverage than a smaller property.

Furthermore, if a property doesn’t abut any stormwater infrastructure, why is it assessed the fee at all, since there’s no maintenance burden to the town? I can only surmise that the fee was introduced to increase town revenue, without technically raising taxes. By giving it the pretense of a “use” fee, the town can avoid counting that as tax revenue and be free to raise taxes for other purposes.

Town taxes should be used to cover common expenses like fire and police that are not directly allocable to “users”. Stormwater management is clearly of that ilk. With the present formula, it seems quite specious to call this a use fee, since it certainly doesn’t apportion the costs of stormwater maintenance on any fair usage basis. It should rather be covered by our basic town taxes.

I wonder if the next step is to take our largest town expense, schools, and start assessing a use fee to families with children? I bet that would generate some significant pushback. I have to say, it’s really disheartening to think that our town officials might concoct such a convoluted artifice just to extract more revenue from its citizens.

Charles Ziering

Simon Willard Road