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Exeter resident Mary Pat Coleman attended Tuesday’s public information session about the Wyoming Valley Levee fee increase seeking answers for her 86-year-old mother.
Coleman said her mom can’t understand why she’s among those forced to pay the fee to maintain the 16-mile, flood-control system on the Susquehanna River. All county property owners share the tab for roads, bridges and services they may not use, and the entire county would suffer if Wilkes-Barre flooded because it is the county seat and home to many employers and institutions, she argued.
“We are here for the good of most,” she said in reference to county government. “We’re a community.”
Similar arguments have been raised since county officials implemented the fee on 14,153 properties in 2009 to end reliance on county government funding.
The fee boundary lines were based on which properties are protected by the raised levee, which was designed to prevent a repeat of the 1972 Agnes Flood, the record Susquehanna River flood until 2011. The fee is paid by the owners of properties touched by water in 1972 in Edwardsville, Exeter, Forty Fort, Hanover Township, Kingston, Luzerne, Plymouth, Pringle, Swoyersville, West Wyoming, Wyoming and Wilkes-Barre, officials said.
With no county funding, county Flood Protection Authority members told Coleman the fee is their only revenue stream to ensure the levee is maintained to federal standards. The authority doesn’t have legal power to charge all county property owners, they said.
Prior authority executive director Jim Brozena, who now serves as an authority consultant, also told Coleman all county property owners contribute to flood protection because they have been paying off debt the county incurred to raise the levee.
Authority Chairman Kevin O’Brien said he and other board members and employees voluntarily chose to hold the informational session to candidly respond to concerns.
He also wanted to stress levee maintenance involves more than cutting grass along the levee, pointing to a bookcase packed with manuals of regulations and compliance standards required for the system’s eight electrical substations, 39 pump stations and other components.
Depending on the assessed value of their structures, residential property owners protected by the levee will pay $16.56 to $33.12 more per year, while the annual increase will range from $33.12 to $536.64 for commercial, industrial and tax-exempt buildings.
The fee increase was necessary, authority members said, because the $1.2 million it generated annually wasn’t keeping pace with the average $1.89 million needed each year to maintain the system.
“We want the people to know what their money is being spent on. We want them to understand,” O’Brien said.
County Councilman Edward Brominski, of Swoyersville, questioned staffing expenses.
Authority Executive Director Christopher Belleman said about $450,000 of the $767,085 in budgeted employee costs for 2017 covers salaries for 12 full-time employees, while the rest is for benefits.
Brominski asked what work is performed by levee maintenance workers during the winter. In addition to handling tree removal, these employees took the initiative to refurbish grass cutters and other equipment — work that would have been more costly to outsource, O’Brien said.
Kingston resident Brian Shiner urged the authority to reconsider the Feb. 1 date the fee bills will be issued in 2018, saying it’s too close to municipal and county property tax bills and Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority bills. It will result in many “getting clobbered” in the first quarter, he said.
The levee fee bills typically are issued in October of the year they are due, but they will be mailed June 1 this year because the authority needs the revenue sooner. The mailing date was slated for Feb. 1 in 2018 and going forward.
O’Brien said the authority will discuss the possibility of changing the Feb. 1 date.
Ed Gustitus, also of Kingston, grilled the authority about expenses, suspecting there was a “cushion.”
O’Brien said authority members are frugal and reviewed financial options for a year, determined to keep increases as low as possible, particularly for residential property owners.
The increase amounts to 35 percent for the 12,403 residential properties, which make up nearly 88 percent of the fee payers.
The 517 commercial, industrial and tax-exempt buildings assessed under $100,000 also will pay 35 percent more, but those assessed over that dollar amount will pay 79 percent more, officials said.
