CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Earlier this week, the Corpus Christi City Council was presented with a proposed budget that included a new stormwater fee. It's something City Manager Peter Zanoni said is being misunderstood.
Under the city's current stormwater program, the fee is already in your water rate. The more water you use, the more you pay for stormwater.
As we reported, this new approach would be based, instead, on stormwater runoff, with the city looking at areas on your property like concrete and rooftops where rainwater doesn't soak into the ground.
While some could pay a bit more under the proposed new system, Zanoni said most people won't end up paying anything extra at all.
"We're going to take the fee out of the water bill, which means water bills will reduce, and we've designed it to where for the average customers, the fee is equal to the reduction in the water bill, so there's a net sum of 'zero' for most of the typical households across the city," Zanoni said.
The money from the proposed standalone stormwater utility fee would allow the City to build a comprehensive five year improvement program.
That includes additional arterial and residential street sweeping, adding another ditch maintenance crew, and also developing a program for inspecting and maintaining underground pipes.
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