I did not know that this hadn’t been done yet.
Developers will join property owners in paying drainage fees following City Council’s approval Wednesday.
The developer impact fee was included in the voter-approved 2010 city charter amendment now known as Rebuild Houston, but city officials said the unwieldy process of setting the fee under state law slowed its implementation.
The developer impact fee, a one-time payment instead of the monthly fee paid by water customers, will take effect April 3, 2014, city Public Works and Engineering Department spokesman Alvin Wright said.
Since July 2011, home and business owners have paid about $181 million in monthly drainage fees based on their properties’ impervious cover – surfaces that do not absorb water, such as driveways and patios – to improve the city’s streets and drainage infrastructure.
Mayor Annise Parker said the importance of the fee is not the revenue it will generate but that it links new development with stress on drainage infrastructure, and that it fulfills a request made by voters.
“It’s a relatively small amount of money … but it acknowledges that, as we build parts of the city that are currently undeveloped, we put burdens on our drainage system,” Parker said.
Like I said, it hadn’t occurred to me that this was still a pending item. It’s not a lot of money, but given the strong feelings some people have about ReBuild Houston, it’s nice to see that this got done with no apparent fuss.