Mr. Perez

On Monday night, we stood outside of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Perez' house on Joyce Circle to celebrate a huge victory for the neighborhood: the completion of a drainage project that they had been fighting for for 10 years. We drank hot chocolate and ate tamales and sweet bread. Mr. Perez' sons told me stories about growing up with flooding as an everyday event. One son told me that his friends used to ask if their dad was setting up a bunker because sandbags always surrounded the house.

I met Mr. Perez at one of my first District 2 Community meetings. He came with a crowd of angry neighbors and some photos of what his neighborhood looks like under water. Every time it rains, they explained, the neighborhood floods. No matter whether it is a tiny drizzle or a downpour, it is under water. What finally drove them to my meeting is that one of their oldest neighbors got trapped in her home by a flood of water pouring into her home and had to be rescued by the fire department. Some residents had moved out because they couldn't take the hassle and the property damage anymore. They had had enough.

I called the Streets Department to alert them, thinking I was the first on the scene. Turns out they knew the scene all too well. Every time it started to rain, they had the troops out at Joyce Circle with sand bags. Joyce Circle had been on the books for 10 years but had never been funded. This is what stormwater management looked like under the City. The Streets Department had been asking for the money for this project and other stormwater projects for 10 years but couldn't get anyone to listen. We finally funded the Joyce Circle project using certificates of obligation but not without some resistance from other members of council who wanted to wait and take it to the voters. One of our most basic obligations--public safety and the protection of property--had been ignored and underfunded to the detriment of many property owners in our city. This was starkly highlighted by the Storm 2006.

On Tuesday, the City Council will introduce an ordinance and then hear the issue on December 16 on the stormwater utility brought to us by a citizen initiative petition. The initiative petition was signed by 2,400 registered voters in El Paso. The signers of the initiative petition are asking that the responsibility for setting the fees for the stormwater utility be taken from the Public Service Board and given to city council.

I supported the creation of the stormwater utility, and I supported handing over the fee setting and the management of the stormwater utility to the Public Service Board. While it has been a bruising political battle, I still think it is the right thing to do for our community.

Here is what we were trying to accomplish in the creation of the stormwater utility:

1. One of the biggest deficiencies of the stormwater system under the City of El Paso was the regular and routine maintenance of the system. If culverts are clogged, if inlets are blocked by trash, if retention and detention basins have years and years of built up silt, the system loses its intended capacity to handle stormwater runoff. This is when flooding occurs. This is when property damage occurs. During the public hearings on the stormwater utility, the public indicated that they wanted a system that had dedicated resources to regularly maintain our existing stormwater system.

2. A second defiency of the system under the city was that there was not regular capital improvements made to the system. After the damage from Storm 2006, the City determined that at least 46% of the new projects that we had to undertake in order to fix the system had been on the books for at least 5 or more years, 20% of those (like Joyce Circle) had been on the books for 10 or more years. If we had taken on those projects when they were identified, we would not have seen the kind of damage we did in 2006 and the projects probably would not have cost us that much. During the public hearings on the stormwater utility, the public indicated that they wanted a system that had an annual amount available to begin chipping away at the millions of dollars in capital improvements needed to make the system function better.

3. The final consideration that was very important to me in representing an older area of the city that is more dense is that the system be funded based on a property's contribution to the need for stormwater management. If you own a sixteen acre asphalt car lot, you are contributing much more to the stormwater problem then if you own a a 10-story building on an acre of land. If you own a large home, you are contributing more to the stormwater problem than someone who owns a modest-sized home. Those who contribute more to the problem should pay more or find a way to offset their impact on the stormwater system.

So the stormwater utility got going in March. Since that time, we have seen more regular maintenance of the stormwater system. For example, five retention ponds up near Scenic Drive in my district have been de-silted for the first time in 15 years. The stormwater utility, under the Public Service Board, has begun a master planning process that will determine the priorities for capital improvements. Right now, the recommendations are being reviewed by a community advisory board and those final recommendations will come to the City Council for approval. Once approved, the stormwater utility will begin to make annual capital improvements to our stormwater system. The Public Service Board has responded appropriately to concerns about the fees being too high, but the fees are based on a property owner's contribution to the problem. I think there is still some work that needs to be done on fees, especially working with large property owners to find ways to reduce their impact on the system and thus their fees. I've suggested to the City Manager and will suggest the same to City Council that maybe we assign someone to work with property owners to identify ways to reduce their fees (ex. more landscaping, less asphalt).

So who knows what will happen on Tuesday, but I just wanted to refresh everyone's understanding of how we go here.

Meanwhile, Mr. Perez and the Joyce Circle neighborhood is happy. They told me that this will be the first time they will get to enjoy the rain. Mr. Perez told me once when I visited him during construction with the streets all dug up and workers everywhere and tractors moving dirt and laying pipe, "Susie, this is like Disneyland to me."