Governments are ready to collect stormwater fees from the School Board, whose budget could take a hit.
By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published December 8, 2003
For a decade, Pinellas County cities and the School Board have fought each other in court over millions of dollars of unpaid stormwater utility bills.
The cities say anyone who owns developed property - even schools and the driver's license bureau - owes a monthly fee, which pays for storm sewers and ponds that get rid of rainwater.
But the School Board says it's exempt.
And for most of that time, at least, the courts agreed, ruling the stormwater fee was a tax, and the School Board shouldn't pay. Government agencies are exempt from having to pay taxes.
That changed in September when the Florida Supreme Court said the fee wasn't a tax, and that school boards and government agencies could be forced to pay.
Now some cities have come to collect.
The issues seems likely to be decided in a yet another case currently pending in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court. Both sides have much at stake.
If the School Board wins, city and county governments in Pinellas could lose a total of nearly $1-million in revenue per year.
And if the cities win, that money, and perhaps the $1.5-million in refunds already paid out, could be taken from agency budgets, making it that much more expensive to pay teachers, furnish classrooms and build roads.
"This is a big chunk of change we're talking about," said Mike Connors, director of engineering, stormwater and traffic operations for the city of St. Petersburg.
In September, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the city of Gainesville could charge the Florida Department of Transportation a stormwater utility fee. The DOT had argued that the fee was a tax, which the government agency wasn't required to pay.
Connors said St. Petersburg is losing $200,000 a year from the unpaid stormwater fees and hasn't collected money from the School Board since 1993. All the money the city did collect, $891,000, was refunded in 1999.
But city attorneys and stormwater officials from across the state said the September ruling could change everything.
"It gives municipalities new options," said Kurt Spitzer, the executive director of the Florida Stormwater Association, a statewide lobbying group representing government officials involved in stormwater control. "The Supreme Court was pretty clear and the language was pretty strong. ... Stormwater is a valid fee."
The state created a stormwater management program in the late 1980s to treat runoff from developed properties. In order to pay for the program, cities charge a monthly fee. Single-family residences pay one fee, which usually appears on a homeowner's utility bill and is less than $10 a month.
Non-residential properties pay a higher price per month calculated from the size of the developed property. Undeveloped lands are exempt from the fee.
In 1993, the School Board and St. Petersburg Junior College sued St. Petersburg because they believed the stormwater fees were an illegal tax. In 1996, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge Crockett Farnell agreed, saying entities which are exempt from taxes, such as schools and state agencies, don't have to pay the stormwater fee.
An appellate court affirmed Farnell's decision in 1998, and subsequently most municipalities stopped billing the School Board and refunded the collected stormwater fees.
But at least one city, Clearwater, refused to refund the money.
In 1999, the School Board sued the city to recover $450,000 in collected stormwater fees. SPJC, now known as St. Petersburg College, also was part of the lawsuit, but it later settled with Clearwater and received a $136,680 refund.
In August, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Thomas E. Penick said in the Clearwater case that stormwater fees were not a tax. But he still ruled for the School Board, saying they were exempt based on a state statute exempting educational facilities from building codes and ordinances.
"I don't think the statute is really appropriate to this situation," Clearwater assistant city attorney Paul Richard Hull said. "But obviously, some people do."
Hull said the city will appeal Penick's decision.
Alan Zimmet, Largo's city attorney, said he thinks an appellate court will overturn Penick's decision.
"The city of Clearwater will eventually be successful," Zimmet said. "... When that happens, then we'll revisit what we do."
Largo has not been billing the School Board, but at least two other cities, Dunedin and Oldsmar, have.
In October, School Board attorney John W. Bowen wrote a letter to Safety Harbor City Manager Wayne Logan saying the School Board would not pay stormwater fees to that city, after the board received a payment request.
Bowen said similar letters to other cities are in the works.
He wants to avoid directing money from the schools' budget to pay for stormwater runoff.
"Any money that we have to spend on something like (stormwater fees) comes out of the classroom," Bowen said. "We only have so much money. We can't generate more.
"And we don't charge students user fees."
- Staff researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Aaron Sharockman can be reached at 727 771-4303 or asharockman@sptimes.com
