LEWISTON – What looks like a big hit for the city is actually a big savings for property taxpayers, according to city officials.

The city itself will be the top ratepayer in a new storm-water fee program, which assesses the city $145,800 a year for its series of parking lots, rooftops, sidewalks and school buildings.

But the fee amounts to a bookkeeping maneuver that transfers money from one account to another, officials said.

“Property taxes were paying 100 percent of the costs related to storm water,” said David Jones, the city’s public services director. “That amounted to $1.6 million. Now, the city’s share of that is $145,800.”

That’s what the City Council had in mind when it decided to go with the storm-water fee last spring, said City Councilor Mark Paradis.

“The more you paid in taxes before, the more you paid for storm-sewer work,” Paradis said. “Now, people are paying based on their costs. Property taxpayers, and especially homeowners, get a break.”

City councilors adopted the storm-water fee plan Tuesday night, but they settled on the basic idea in June. They trimmed their property tax collections by $1.6 million. The fee will replace that money, paying for maintenance of the city’s system of canals, culverts and storm drains as well as regular street sweeping and work creating a separate storm-sewer system.

The city charges an annual flat fee of $30 for the first 2,900 square feet of water-impervious surface. That is the extent of the fee for most single-family homes. Duplexes and two-unit residences pay $45. Larger properties with more flat spaces pay more, at a rate of 4.4 cents per square foot.

In all, 7,365 residential properties account for $237,900 of the city’s take on the storm-water fee. That’s about 12.5 percent of the total.

Wal-Mart will pay $97,000 per year for the hard surfaces around its distribution facility, making it the second-highest ratepayer under the new plan. Bates College, paying $62,500 for its parking lots, roofs and sidewalks, is the third-highest ratepayer.

‘A fair plan’

The city could begin mailing bills based on the new storm-water utility later this month, along with the city’s quarterly sewer and water bills.

“It’s going to be all part of the same mailing,” said Jones. “It’ll just be another line on that same sheet.”

The city is using its geographic information system to map out hard surfaces. The information is fed into engineering software to determine the volume of paved, impervious surfaces that make up each lot.

One goal was to get nonprofit groups to pay for city services. Colleges, hospitals and churches do not pay property taxes on most of their property. Now, they pay about 9 percent of the city’s storm-water costs.

“I would have liked to see those numbers go higher,” Paradis said. “I would have liked to have nonprofits pay more. But we created a fair plan. Everyone is paying the same fee, so it is definitely a step in the right direction.”

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