This passing shower has turned into a deluge.

Last month, during public hearings on the city of Lewiston’s new storm water fee, the response was symbolized by empty chairs in the City Council chambers. The anticipated mob of angry ratepayers failed to appear, indicating at least tacit acceptance of the unique fee.

Like rain itself, the fee aims to have the cost of maintaining canals, culverts, drains and the installation of sewer system upgrades fall more equally across the city. The calculating factor is square footage of impervious surface, which basically means the harder you are, the bigger you pay.

Nonprofits exempt from property taxes would pay a purportedly fairer share of their impact on municipal infrastructure. Annual savings, according to the city, would amount to $30-$50 per homeowner.

On its own impervious surface, the “rain tax” is a good idea. Service centers like Lewiston need creative, yet equitable, methods of alleviating property tax burden on homeowners. The rain fee, by bringing new revenue from sources thought to pay a disproportionate share for municipal services, does just that.

In Maine’s flawed taxation system, such fees are growing necessities for communities faced with taxing citizens from their homes. Statewide solutions, like LD 1 or the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, are respectively unproven or as yet unapproved.

Until then, it takes bold local initiatives to spur real, systemic, tax reform. The rain fee represents action by the city of Lewiston, which must spend millions in upcoming years to improve its storm water maintenance infrastructure. City leaders should be credited for pushing the initiative from a mere February idea to a September policy, and putting the cost more equally on all who would benefit from storm water investment.

Now, opposition to the fee has emerged from petitioners seeking to freeze the fee implementation, led by two candidates for political office: David Hughes, the Republican candidate for House District 72, and Larry Poulin, Republican candidate for Senate District 16.

City Administrator Jim Bennett has reacted forcefully, freezing hiring and asking schools to cut $900,000.

This all smacks of a pure political serve and volley, with Hughes and Poulin playing doubles against Bennett and the city of Lewiston.

With those hardest hit by the fee staying largely silent, the silhouette of the petition as a political ploy grows crisper, and forces the city to contemplate where to find $1.6 million if the fee stalls. (Which it has, as the first round of fee billing – set for later this month – won’t likely occur.)

None of this encourages dialogue on the merits of the rain fee, but only raises questions about the petitioners’ intentions and commentary on the city administrator’s strong reaction.

Time to turn off the political waterworks. Though in every taxpayer’s life a little rain must fall, residential homeowners in Lewiston have been stuck in the elements long enough, and need the umbrella that the fee represents.