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Officials lay out plans for flood mitigation
Homeowners to pay fee for upgrades to infrastructure
CANFIELD
Residents within the ABC Water and Storm Water District learned how the district plans to upgrade aging stormwater infrastructure and prevent flood emergencies through a new property-tax assessment.
Keith Rogers, Canfield Township administrator and district board member, laid out the plans and the necessity of the fee during an open house Monday night at the city’s Main Street library. Public reaction has been decidedly positive, he said.
“Once I explained the aging infrastructure that we have and what the cost associated with bringing it up to the Mahoning County standards [is], they think it’s a good idea,” he said, recalling stormwater overflow near Fairway and Westington drives that was “basically the Rio Grande coming down from Tippecanoe Country Club.”
The average homeowner will pay $3.12 per month to the district. The fee is based on the amount of a property’s surfaces that don’t absorb water, such as rooftops, driveways and parking lots.
Property owners can learn how much they’ll pay for the stormwater fee through county auditor online records, by searching for the property and navigating to the “Tax” tab. The fee will be listed as a special assessment.
Tony Bettile, owner of Storage and More of Canfield, along state Route 46, and a former township trustee, estimated there’s about 4 acres of gravel surface at his business, which is rated the same as blacktop and rooftops when the fee is calculated, he learned.
“If it’s the only way to upgrade our system locally, [if] it’s to benefit the community as a whole” then it’s a necessary and positive charge, he said.
His business, however, does maintain its own water-detention system, which he learned qualifies him for a 25 percent discount. Rogers said those credits are not currently offered for residential property owners.
Loran Brooks, 80, of Canfield Township will pay about $39 for the new fee on each half of his 2018 taxes, according to auditor records.
“It’s something that we need in the township to be able to take care of problems,” he said. “It’s a small fee to pay for what we get.”
Rogers said he doesn’t foresee an increase to the fee for some time.
First-year state Rep. Don Manning of New Middletown, R-59th, said he’s paid close attention to flooding issues in Boardman and he’s “not a fan” of the district duplicating services already available to homeowners – specifically an up to $2,500 grant through the county sanitary engineer to install sanitary back-flow prevention devices in older homes with interconnected sanitary and stormwater lines.
To take advantage of that grant, property owners must employ a county-bonded contractor.
“Everybody seems to agree this is probably one of the better solutions to prevent water from getting into the [stormwater system],” he said. “Most people agree that a lot of these systems were put in a long time ago and probably need some upgrades at some point.”
The fee is expected to raise about $260,000 for stormwater development projects in Canfield Township and about $900,000 in Boardman, officials said last week.
Jason Loree, Boardman Township administrator and district board member, referenced Aug. 10 flooding, where rainfall reached between 3 to 6 inches in just 90 minutes, submerging roads in a mixture of storm and sewer water. The district plans to meet with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on establishing a grant-funded channel running through Boardman. The district can apply for federal grant dollars, whereas the township cannot, he said.
The district also will prioritize repair and replacement of township catch basins. There are about 2,000 in Canfield and 5,000 in Boardman, officials said.
“All funds that are collected from the stormwater utility fee will stay in the community,” Rogers said.