Our city should break from the county stormwater taxing district before forthcoming capital costs impose unnecessary tax burdens.
Your roof and driveway have been measured by a contractor for the county. We are now being taxed for the rainwater that runs off your "impervious surfaces". In Wyoming, virtually all our city has "combined sewers". The rainwater runoff into those combined sewers is outside the control of the county storm water district. Rainwater runoff carries some wastes into rivers. The county chose to tax every square foot alike, whether your roof or the factory or auto salvage or pool chemical yard, even though your home contributes less toxic material to runoff into streams than does industrial property. Taxing all alike disregards the whole point of cutting water pollution by reducing polluted runoff. Wyoming can and should file our own runoff control program, for the small amount of rain runoff that does not flow into combined sewers. Doing so saves us the cost burden of the county's elaborate and multi-million dollar stormwater spending. The county is enriching its contractor, not protecting homeowners' interests. In future years when actual construction of rainwater ponds and retention channels starts, Wyoming will be subsidizing runoff controls in less developed areas of the county with our tax dollars, though benefits to our city will be miniscule. When the huge cost bite is recognized then, it will be too late. We need to file our own state permit and drop this county fiasco in 2005-2006.
|