Three city council members voted against a proposed Right-of-Way use fee in San Angelo. SMD 6 Rep. Mary Coffey shared her views on the matter and why she ultimately cast her vote against the proposed fee in a phone interview with the Concho Observer Tuesday afternoon.
Coffey said that she understood why the measure had to be made to cover a budget shortfall, but wishes that the city could find other ways of covering it without reaching into the pocket of “Joe Citizen.”
“I was pretty disappointed this morning,” she said. “I mean, we knew this was coming. It was brought up in our first budget meeting. And, if you go back and look at the tape of that meeting, I was kind of belligerent … about the fact that we’re always going back to … the citizens. And, you know, they have had to tighten their belt, just like everybody else, and I felt like at that time that the city should try to do that as well.”
Councilmembers Karen-Hesse Smith (SMD 5) and Patrick Keely (SMD 4) also voted against the measure, which passed 4-3.
Coffey was quick to point out that the city is under a legal obligation to have a completed budget soon, and that their budget must be balanced.
She explained more about what seemed to the city to be the least-bad option, but said ultimately, she kept coming back to the overwhelming number of messages she received in the last several weeks protesting the measure.
“Well, you know I received 31 emails and they were all against it,” she explained, “And all the messages were that they are either on a fixed income, or we just cannot do this.
“When they say that ‘we’re just getting taxed to death’, and…a fee every time there’s something that [the city] needs, it’s going to fall back on Joe Citizen of course. Unfortunately, that’s a hard truth that we’re not going be able to get around, but I still I still think that there is more we can do.”
The ROW fee has come under attack in recent weeks. For more information click here.
The fee will be charged through the city’s existing water bill systems. For all residences who pay a water bill, the fee will total to $15 dollars per month across the board, for a total of $180 dollars annually.
The fee is flat, and applies to all residences regardless of size.
For commercial properties, the business will be assigned a ROW Use fee code, as determined by a traffic engineer schedule. From there, businesses will be judged based on how many trips the location generates.
One example that was given during town halls earlier this month by city manager Phil Urrutia is that a grocery store like HEB would be charged $350 dollars per month under the fee.
The fee is also applicable to anyone who has a water meter, including non-profits and churches. Shannon Memorial Hospital, and other large organizations with multiple water meters, will be combined into one special use class and pay their fee that way.
Consultants with Kimley-Horn helped the city assemble the fee. They offered clarifications about many concerns regarding the fee at Tuesday’s meeting.
The first major problem the public saw was that the same fee applied to a home worth $100,000 dollars or a house worth one million.
According to Kimley-Horn, the fee is assessed only on which houses generate more trips on the road. And to that, they say, smaller houses end up generating more trips on the whole when compared to larger homes.
Residents who feel that their commercial properties are not being charged fairly will have a protest line set up through the city’s customer service. For residential complaints, the city has said that utility relief will be available through the Concho Valley Community Action Agency.
