Nick Coleman: Bugged and bogged down by storm-water fees
Nick Coleman, Star Tribune

Jan Gustafson has lived in northeast Minneapolis for 50 years, since she and her late husband, Carl, bought Carl's parents' home in 1955. If the city's new storm-water fee doesn't bankrupt her, she'd like to stay there.

I wrote about this new tax last week, calling it a "rain soaker" charge and criticizing it as a way to raise taxes without saying so -- and to raise them disproportionately on those who can least afford to pay, such as 70-year-old widows like Gustafson.

As a result, I stand accused of not taking storm runoff seriously and being indifferent to the pollution of our lakes and streams. Nonsense.

I agree it is important to control runoff and pollution. But the city promised that the new fee -- instituted in March when storm-sewer charges were separated from water usage fees -- would not mean big increases for most customers and would not raise new revenues for the city.

Tell that to Jan Gustafson.

She is just one of at least 300 city homeowners who have filed appeals over the new charge, and many more may still be too bewildered to understand what is going on. Gustafson, a retired school aide and dance instructor, has spent weeks trying to figure the thing out and she has put together a thick folder of papers and legal documents. But when you go through all of it, the bottom line is simple:

A 70-year-old widow and grandmother who is trying to hold onto her home of 50 years on a fixed income is now paying almost a dollar a day for the rain that falls on her yard. The rain that has been falling there since 1955.

Gustafson used to pay $3.64 a month for her water usage and a storm fee. When the city separated the two charges last month, her water charge dropped to $2. But her new storm runoff fee hit harder than a gully-whumper in June: $26.68 a month.

That's a total of $28.68 -- $25 higher than she used to pay. Add that to the $300 property-tax increase she got hit with when the valuation of her home was raised 20 percent, and Gustafson faces $600 a year in new charges.

It is lovely to read politicians bragging that our taxes aren't going up. But read the fine print: It's just the wealthiest whose taxes aren't going up. The widows are paying through the nose.

And the churches, too. The rain soaker falls heavily on churches, especially those with parking lots. In Minneapolis, most of these churches and parking lots have been around for many decades. Now, suddenly, some of them are being forced to cut into charity programs to pay for the rain.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. But shouldn't existing properties be grandfathered in so high charges would apply only to new construction that ignores the guidelines? Or will cash-strapped churches have more widows to care for after they've busted their rainy day funds?

"This is really frustrating," Gustafson told me over a cup of coffee in her Swedish-themed kitchen, where even the paper towels are carefully selected ("Thanks For Being a Good Friend" is printed on each sheet). "If my husband were alive [Carl was an engineer], this would be a piece of cake for him. But I'm not smart enough to figure it out."

Gustafson is plenty smart. But the new rules are complicated. And the indifference at City Hall to the problems of homeowners who have to figure them out -- and pay for them -- is clear. Property owners must pay the assessed charge until they can appeal and get their appeal heard. But that is expected to take six weeks, or longer.

Gustafson's yard is a normal lot, 50 by 125 feet. The city says that 4,800 of her 6,250 square feet are impervious to rainwater. Gustafson, who has mapped her lot carefully, says the true number is only 2,800 square feet.

One problem may be that her home is zoned as a duplex even though it hasn't been used as one for 30 years, since her aunts lived upstairs. It has been a single-family home ever since. But one official advised Gustafson to remodel her home (taking out the upstairs kitchen and making other changes), so she could save some on the rain-soaker tax.

You can see why she needs to vent.

Hundreds of property owners are in her shoes, but the city's answer is that it is up to them to find a remedy.

Gustafson showed me a jargon-ridden "Storm Water Utility Fee Credit Manual" the city sent her when she complained. That's the one that tells property owners to dig "swales" or wet ditches in their yards.

Start swinging your pickax, Grandma! You've got some swales to dig!

"Senior citizens should at least have an ombudsman to help us figure out how to do this," she says, complaining that her pleas to the city have gone unanswered. "I've spent weeks on this, working on the facts, drawing diagrams [if you appeal your charge, you have to provide a map of your property]. They're just lucky I don't have any blood-pressure problems.

"But I'll be darned if I'll just roll over and pay this tax just because they think I'm old and I don't want to fight.

"They picked on the wrong Swede."

Nick Coleman is at [email-masked].