Stormwater fees in Hampton will keep going up if city budget provision is approved
Hampton’s budget season has shifted into gear with the usual public conversations happening, but one engagement feature for residents, online polling, has been scaled down this year.
For more than a decade it was a way for residents to rank the new things they wanted to see funded. That’s a harder question to answer this year, as commercial revenues have fallen during the pandemic.
“And that means less money for those sources to fund city services. So, this is not a year where we will be polling residents on new city services that they might want to see, because that’s not going to be something that we’re really in the position to do until the economy fully recovers from the pandemic,” City Manager Mary Bunting said. “But we absolutely do want to hear from the public about their thoughts as to the city services they care most about ... if it important enough to go ahead and bite the bullet and do an increase ... or do we prefer to wait?”
The Hampton council Wednesday heard another round of budget items to chew on before Bunting presents her recommended budget April 15.
This session focused on potential increases for wastewater and storm water fees, the latter that has increased steadily by a $1 every year since 2019. With that extra money collected, the city plans to pay for several projects aimed at flood mitigation as part of its Resilient Hampton endeavor.
Public works manager Jason Mitchell outlined a timeline for the next several years — for this budget cycle, storm water fees would raise to $10.83 a month. With the annual $1 increase, storm water fees would rise to $15.83 by 2027. On alternate years, beginning this fiscal cycle, 80% of those collected fees would be devoted to managing storm water issues outside of the targeted Resilient Hampton areas, to mitigating flooding in other neighborhoods.
Mitchell said the department planned to use $1.5 million from its reserves — currently at $6.9 million — to keep fee increases level each year and still have some left in reserves for necessary capital projects. Without taking this approach, the reserves would be depleted by 2024, he said.
“If we would consistently use that draw down, that reserve over the years, so we can consistently do that along with small rate increases to keep our rates low,” Mitchell said.
Bunting said the council has choices. If it did not want to do the dollar increase each year, it could use more of the reserves and “keep some of those capital projects in play,” she said. Alternatively, she added, “if you didn’t want to draw down the fund balance and you didn’t want to do the dollar (increase), another choice is to not do some capital projects.”
Councilman Jimmy Gray said that with increased housing assessments in many residential areas and projects in those same neighborhoods possibly being placed on hold depending on how the city uses its reserves is something he needs to take a closer look at.
“I hate the thought of having to put storm water projects on hold. It was difficult to look at storm water fee increases and those projects in isolation, compared to other things,” Gray said. “People (are going) to have to pay, have higher real estate taxes or potentially pay higher real estate taxes and then increased storm water fees as well, I mean, to the taxpayers it’s all taxes. I’m also sensitive to the concerns people have right now.”
Wastewater fees and surcharges also are proposed to tack on an additional $4.07 to a user’s monthly bill, Mitchell said. Solid waste fees would not be going up this year.
Hampton will host Facebook Live Q &A beginning at 7 p.m. March 18 and March 25. A noon session takes place Monday, March 22. For residents that do not have internet or who are not on Facebook, chats will be rebroadcast on Hampton TV, Cox 47: Verizon Fios channel 22, officials said. Bunting said she welcomes setting up sessions with individual neighborhood groups.
The full recommended budget will be released next month. Public hearings during council meetings take place on April 28 and May 5, with the council set to vote on the budget May 12.
Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-247-4832, lvernonsparks@dailypress.com
