Today I listened with interest to a presentation on efforts, by a broad coalition of local government entities, to make a modest change to California Proposition 218. The 1996 constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 popular vote to create or raise fees—the add-ons to property tax bills local government uses to pay for schools, parks, and other things people need.
Proposition 218 exempts water, sewer, and garbage fees. The logic of the exemption is that these utility fees are for are services provided directly to the property owner, and are in direct proportion to the cost of individual service.
Local governments would like to add stormwater to the list of exemptions. The proposal presented today foresees the creation of local stormwater utilities that would fund flood control, storm drains, and stormwater pollution prevention programs—and could create raise fees to pay for those programs without a 2/3 popular vote.
As much as I hope this effort succeeds, I think the analogy to water, sewer, and garbage collection is flawed.
The rain that falls, and the runoff it creates, are things communities hold in common. Keeping that runoff unpolluted, controlling it so it doesn’t flood our neighborhoods, maintaining the habitats it nourishes—every benefit runoff provides is a benefit to all of us. We all live downstream, as the saying goes.
As we get ever deeper into the business of protecting and enhancing urban watersheds, we realize that our work is entwined with every problem and benefit that makes up a City. Our rain gardens are play areas; our streams are places to escape to and explore, but can’t be trash-free until we solve homelessness; our streets carry the worst floods, and we must be conscious of runoff when we wash or fix our cars, or do any work outside.
Stormwater is exactly the kind of problem a City is (to use Jane Jacobs’ phrase), which is to say it is a common problem, a shared problem, the kind of problem that the Proposition 218 authors deliberately want to make government too starved and weak to do anything about. When Grover Norquist said he wanted to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub, he chose his metaphor well.
