Water and sewer charges have a meter behind them. A stormwater charge does not. Whatever connects a particular parcel to a particular bill has to be constructed, published and defended, and it is almost always measured impervious area expressed in equivalent residential units.
That construction is the whole exposure. It is also the reason stormwater charges are the ones most often litigated: the leading case on the fee-versus-tax question in Michigan was a challenge to a stormwater charge, and the leading case upholding one was too.
What we do
We take the fee ordinance, the current rate schedule, the parcel and impervious area data the charge is billed from, and the stormwater programme budget, and we work back from the bill to the cost.
Four questions, in order. What does the programme cost, by activity, and which of those costs is the fee recovering. How was one equivalent residential unit defined, from what measurement of what population of parcels. How is each parcel’s impervious area measured, when was that measurement last refreshed, and what happens when a property owner says it is wrong. And what credits exist for on-site detention or treatment, on what basis, and who has actually claimed them.
Where the answers are documented we say so and point at the document. Where they are not, that is the finding.
What you get
A written review of the fee against its own basis, with each element sourced to the ordinance, the budget or the parcel data. The impervious area and ERU calculation as a spreadsheet you keep. A list of the places where the current basis is not evidenced, ranked by how exposed each one is. Where the review supports a change, the revised schedule and the bill impact by property type. Slides for the council or board, and us at the meeting.
What we will not do
We will not tell you the fee is legally defensible. That is an opinion about your jurisdiction’s law applied to your ordinance, and it belongs to your attorney. What we produce is the factual record that opinion would be written from.
We will not construct an allocation basis and present it as the one the fee was adopted on. If the ERU definition was never documented, the finding is that it was never documented, and the fix is to adopt one going forward rather than to claim one retrospectively.
We will not measure impervious area from aerial imagery and present it as a survey. Where the parcel data is the source, the review inherits its accuracy, and the review says so.
Fit
Best fit: a city, county or district with an adopted stormwater fee, a parcel-level impervious area dataset of some kind, and either a rate increase coming or a dispute already open.
Also a fit before a programme expands. A fee adopted for street sweeping and inlet cleaning, now funding capital work under a permit obligation, is recovering a different cost than the one it was adopted for, and that is a basis question whether or not anyone has raised it.
Poor fit: if there is no impervious area data at all, the first project is building it from parcel records or imagery, which is a larger piece of work we are happy to scope separately.
Why the price is fixed
The same reason the rate study’s is. The scope is the four questions above and the deliverables listed under them, priced by the number of parcels and by how much of the ordinance and budget record is already published.