Orange County commissioners voted Tuesday to delay further study on a potential stormwater utility fee until after Florida voters have decided whether to pass a constitutional amendment reducing homeowner property taxes this November.
County staff had been looking into whether to charge a stormwater fee and gathering public feedback at community meetings. Ultimately, commissioners decided they’d aim to revisit the matter at a meeting early next year.
Context and community input
Orange County adopted a stormwater utility ordinance in 1996. At that time, the fee was set to $0 — and it hasn’t changed since.
Now, staff have identified more than $1 billion worth of stormwater projects to improve drainage and water quality infrastructure, according to Julie Bortles, a project manager with the county’s public works department.
“We've got aging systems. We've got areas of the county that do not currently have adequate stormwater treatment or capacity,” Bortles said. “We know that we have increased rainfall. We know that we have impervious areas that are increasing around the county that are adding to the runoff to our stormwater system. And we also have strengthened regulatory requirements.”
Having county residents pay a stormwater utility fee would help fund necessary improvements. But it’s not exactly a popular idea, according to a survey of about 245 county residents.
Just over half of respondents opposed paying a stormwater fee. Still, 61% were concerned about flooding, and 70% thought it was important for Orange County to invest in resilience.
“Probably not a lot of surprises here,” Mayor Jerry Demings said. “People don't want to pay a lot of money, but we still gotta come up with some solutions.”
The county survey also allowed residents to identify any specific areas where they’ve noticed flooding or water quality problems. Geographically, those problem areas were “fairly evenly distributed” across the county, Bortles said.
Jessica Portela-Lopez lives in Orange County’s District 3, which includes parts of the cities of Orlando, Edgewood and Belle Isle. Speaking during a public comment period at Tuesday’s commission meeting, she said she’d support a stormwater utility fee.
“I believe responsible governance includes making decisions to ensure our local government is equipped to handle our community's challenges,” Portela-Lopez said. “When hurricane season comes around, we find ourselves scurrying to address the intense flooding. We know we are experiencing more intense rainfall.”
As climate change drives up global temperatures, it’s causing more intense rainfall extremes: a dynamic only exacerbated by urbanization, according to scientific research.
‘Not a good look’
District 1 Commissioner Nicole Wilson said she’d like to see county staff keep working on the stormwater utility fee, because it would fund critical upgrades.
“We're in this strange drought time in our rainy season, and I'm concerned that it's a little bit ‘out of sight, out of mind,’” Wilson said. “But my first two and a half, three years in office — almost every call we got was about standing water in places we'd never had standing water before and about water quality degradation.”
With a stormwater fee in place, Bortles said, the county would have more flexibility to incentivize low-impact development, or LID. That’s a land development approach that aims to minimize, as much as possible, the addition of cement and other impervious surfaces that inhibit natural flood management. Although the county has developed an LID manual, the strategies within it are currently just suggestions.
Ultimately, commissioners voted against advancing the stormwater utility study any further right now. Instead, the goal is to pick up the discussion in January or February of next year — once voters statewide have decided the outcome of this November’s property tax referendum.
Policy experts say the proposed property tax amendment would create multi-million-dollar budget shortfalls for local governments, forcing them to cut core services and raise other sources of revenue to make up the difference.
RELATED: Property Tax Proposal Raises Concerns Over Budgets and Borrowing
“Yes, short-term, we might have some flooding issues that are going to happen,” said District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad. “But in the mid- and long-term, if we are defunded — like what could potentially happen in November … we have a huge, long-term problem.”
If staff were to continue studying the stormwater utility, it would look especially questionable to county residents, Martinez Semrad said, given commissioners’ recent vote against studying whether developers are paying their fair share toward infrastructure improvements.
“At this point in time, we shouldn't be saying, ‘We're not even going to study if they pay their fair share, but we're going to ask you to increase your fees.’ That is not a good look,” Martinez Semrad said. “And it's not a good look heading into November's election.”
Should the county adopt a stormwater utility fee sometime in the future, Bortles said, staff and commissioners could discuss whether to exempt or provide credits for certain residents — like farmers with large swaths of land that take on more stormwater, or residents already paying into self-imposed taxing districts to fund lake management.
