Winona Lake Moves Forward With Stormwater Utility Study
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
WINONA LAKE – The town council voted unanimously Tuesday to have Wessler Engineering conduct a stormwater utility study, which could lead to a new utility fee for Winona Lake.
Mary Atkins, vice president at Wessler Engineering, presented the proposal for Wessler to assist the town with the study.
She said a stormwater utility “is a utility just like your other utilities that provides stormwater management. It gives you the opportunity to generate revenue through user fees, just like some of your other utilities.”
She said the idea behind the study that Wessler proposed is that “residents tend to pay kind of a flat rate, a common rate, and we do a study to help establish” a base rate called an Equivalent Residential Unit (ERU). “But the idea is that nonresidential properties – you have your residential properties and you have your nonresidential properties – and the nonresidential, they are charged according to their impervious surface area measurements.”
Atkins said there are two different ways to manage a stormwater utility: through the creation of a stormwater management board or, what Wessler recommends to Winona Lake, enacting the user fees into the town’s current sewage works.
“So, your utility would follow a set of policies and procedures, and there would be an ordinance and a rate established,” she said.
The kind of things the town could fund with its stormwater utility would be maintenance of the existing system, manpower, equipment, administrative costs, any failing pipe and stormwater improvement projects.
“The idea here is that you quantify all of those needs and then you associate a cost with them,” Atkins said.
The goal of the study is to justify the stormwater user fees, she said. “The payback, the initial startup cost of doing a study, can be recovered typically in less than six months,” she said, once the town begins charging its customers for the utility.
The stormwater utility can grow as the town grows and the utility fee will provide the town with a steady income, Atkins said.
In Indiana, there are at least 70 stormwater utilities, with Atkins saying there’s 100 to 150 or more. The average utility fee is $4-6 per month per residential customer, with nonresidential customers paying more than that.
Atkins recommended the town not move too quickly on the stormwater utility and said it would take about six months from when Wessler begins the study.
After some questions and comments from the council, Councilman Jim Zachary made the motion to approve the study, with Jim Lancaster providing the second. No dollar figure for the study was given.
Earlier in the meeting, Clerk-Treasurer Kent Adams presented the 2020-21 budget comparison and budget calendar. The public hearing for the budget is Sept. 15 at 6 p.m., with the official adoption set for Oct. 20 at 6 p.m.
The 2021 budget is being proposed exactly the same as the 2020 budget at $5,079,852.
“The net assessed valuation for the community went up $11 million, which then transfers to allow us to lower our tax rate from 0.710 cents to 0.6857, which is about 0.153 cents,” Adams said.
There are no salary increases in the 2021 budget for elected officials or town employees.
“I don’t know what else to tell you, but it looks pretty positive,” Adams said.
In other business:
• Town Manager Craig Allebach opened the trash and recycle bids. A recommendation will be made to the town council at its next meeting.
Advanced Disposal, the town’s current provider, had a base bid of $9.40 for trash for the first year and $8.57 for recycling. It then goes up to $9.73 and $8.78 respectively in the second year and $9.97 and $9 in the third year.
The other bid was from Borden, which offered a base bid of $23.84 for trash and recycling combined for the first year, then $24.32 in the second year and $24.81 in the third year.
• The council approved an ordinance for revenue bonds and an ordinance for appropriation proceeds from bonds.
Town attorney Adam Turner said the new bond is for the expansion of water main infrastructure from Lakeland Christian Academy on CR 250 out to the new Raccoon Run development and the greenway expansion.
• Allebach announced Canal Days in The Village at Winona is 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aug. 29. Proceeds from the cardboard boat races benefit Fellowship Missions, the local homeless shelter. Applications for boats are being accepted until Aug. 28 at villageatwinona.com under “events.” As of Tuesday, there were six boats registered and more are wanted.
There also will be 25 arts and crafts vendors at Canal Days around the blocks of Administration and Auditorium boulevards.
