Storm water user fee increase takes effect

The new storm water user fee that was increased last fall is on this month’s Jasper City Utility bill, due February 10th.

The fee was increased from $2.00 per month for residential customers to $3.96 per month.

City Engineer Chad Hurm recommended the city increase the fee to fund future improvements and maintenance required on the storm water system.

It’s essentially to self-fund a two and a half million-dollar improvement to our storm water system,” said Jasper Mayor Terry Seitz, “and that will occur over the next seven years.”

The Storm Water Board took up the issue in their September 9th meeting and moved to pass the recommendation adopting the new fee on to the Common Council at their Wednesday, September 18th meeting.

The ordinance passed by the Council in September says that the new fee would be $3.96 per ERU — 5,000 square feet of impervious surface — and that it would go into effect January 1st, 2014.

Also, the Department of Local Government has now approved the budget for the City of Jasper. That approval came on December 23rd.

The approved tax rate was .7879 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. Jasper City Clerk Treasurer Juanita Boehm said in September when the budget was passed that she expected the rate to come in around .8000, but she told WITZ News this morning that she is pleased with the rate.

Total assessed property value in Jasper approved by the DLGF was $6.7 million.