AUBURN — Pepperell Mill owner Bob Gladu claims Lewiston’s stormwater fee is a tax in disguise and the city didn’t properly levy such a tax. He believes he shouldn’t have to pay it.

Lewiston claims the stormwater fee is a utility fee fairly based on the amount of runoff generated by a property. It says Gladu owes $9,276 in fees, plus interest, for his Pepperell Mill on Lisbon Street and Adams Avenue.

On Wednesday, the two sides asked a judge to decide who’s right.

The city filed a civil suit against Gladu for past failure to pay the stormwater fee. The city adopted the fee in 2005 to pay for culvert maintenance, street-sweeping and storm-sewer projects. Fees are based on the amount of hard surface on properties, including roofs, sidewalks, parking lots and driveways.

The city has said it established the fee because residential property owners were paying for more than half the cost of dealing with runoff, while tax-exempt properties didn’t pay anything.

But in Androscoggin County Superior Court on Wednesday, Gladu’s lawyer, Scott Lynch, argued that Gladu gets no particular benefit by paying this fee and the city’s primary purpose for enacting the fee was to raise revenue — making the fee, in actuality, a tax.

“It’s a tax on rain,” Lynch said.

The city’s lawyer, David Bertoni, argued that it was a fee, not a tax, and the city was well within its rights to set up a fee system to pay for its runoff costs. 

“It attempts to find a way to make each individual or company pay their own way,” he said.

The two sides asked Justice MaryGay Kennedy for a summary judgment in an effort to avoid a full trial, which has been scheduled for June. Kennedy is expected to rule in the near future.

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