by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
The meter started running July 1 on unpaid stormwater fees for those property owners that haven’t filed for a credit or an exemption.
A 1 percent late fee will be applied to unpaid bills which include City of Jacksonville fees for stormwater and solid waste. An average single-dwelling property owner was billed $30 for stormwater and $30 for solid waste fees by the City in April.
The City doesn’t allow partial payment, so a customer can’t elect to pay solid waste and not the stormwater fee if they are required to pay both.
“The initial response, from a numbers standpoint, has been good,” said Marcy Cook, spokesperson for the City’s Public Works Department. “Just about 65 percent of the invoices we sent out have been paid.”
Fee collection is an ongoing process that will be completed by the end of the summer. About $10 million in stormwater fees have been collected as of Monday.
The stormwater fee was instituted in April to help meet state and federal regulations for treating stormwater runoff by improving the City’s stormwater drainage system and conditions of the St. Johns River. The solid waste fee was instituted to cover the cost of garbage collection in the City.
Credits and exemptions are available for the new stormwater fee and the Public Works Department has processed about 5,700 applications and has received about 1,500 more that have to be processed. Those applications being processed won’t be accessed a late fee.
“We will issue a new bill to customers applying for exemption or credit,” said Cook. “They get a new clock.”
Customers that submitted an application before July 1 may have a late fee on their account until their application is processed. Once the application is processed, the late fee will be removed or the customer will be given additional time to pay the fee. People can still apply for low-income or 501(c)(3) exemptions or a 30 percent pond credit, but the reductions will be applied to next year’s bill.
The first late fee notices will start appearing in customers’ mailboxes on Sept. 1 as Cook expects the review process to be completed by the end of summer.
The Stormwater Management Utility is developing a deadline for how long it will allow late fees to accrue. It will place a lien on a delinquent property once the deadline is reached. This lien will not result in foreclosure, but interest will accumulate and the lien will have to be settled before the property can be sold.
356-2466