TRAVERSE CITY — Handling stormwater can be financially draining, so Traverse City leaders are considering the city’s first drainage district to split the costs.
Commissioners on Monday voted 6-0, with Commissioner Heather Shaw absent, to apply to the Grand Traverse County Drain Commissioner to create a district for a storm drain on Eighth Street. It empties into East Grand Traverse Bay, from which the city draws its drinking water, and city Engineer Anne Pagano noted in a memo that it has water quality and capacity issues.
Their vote followed a second presentation from county Drain Commissioner Andy Smits, who presented the steps to form a drainage district. Monday’s vote was the first of several, and he said the process is meant to be transparent with various points where canceling the project is possible.
One of those would come when a board of determination reviews the project, Smits said. It’s composed of three disinterested people — defined as county residents who own property but don’t live within the municipality affected by the drain, and who aren’t county commissioners. They’ll take testimony at a public meeting and decide if the drain is necessary based on the evidence, including an engineer’s review.
“Again, public participation is encouraged throughout the process,” he said. “This board takes testimony not only from the engineering firm retained by the drain commissioner, but from the public at large.”
Boundaries for the district remain to be seen. Smits told commissioners he would define them working with an engineer, who would help make the determination if it’s practical to proceed prior to the board of determination’s meeting.
Once the district is established after several more steps, the city would have to pay for its portion of the benefits derived from the storm drain, Smits said. Other property owners within the district would split the rest of the cost, with their percentage determined by numerous factors like parcel size, slope, amount of impervious surface and whether stormwater is handled on-site.
Just how those costs would be split up had Commissioner Tim Werner confused, he said. He asked if the city and Michigan Department of Transportation would be paying their fair share for runoff from their respective roads. What concerned him was a potential outcome where residents would pay for more than their share.
Smits, while acknowledging there’s “a good bit of grey area” in apportionment since each district is different, said every owner within a district who isn’t exempt pays for their share of benefits derived.
Exemptions include public land open to public use, but nonprofits would still pay their share, Smits said. So too would other, typically tax-exempt owners like churches and health care institutions.
City commissioners’ decision Monday comes after years of examining how to pay for upkeep to a city infrastructure system without its own dedicated source of revenue. That included forming a stormwater subcommittee in 2021 to consider different funding streams.
City Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht said in June the subcommittee concluded that a stormwater utility as a standalone that charges taxes or fees would face too much legal blowback. Instead, they turned to the state’s drain code as a long-established method, one that can also cross jurisdictional boundaries depending on the runoff’s source.
On Monday, Werner said he wanted to better define what water quality issues the city would address at the Eighth Street drain. He wanted some research done to determine what kind of pollutants are entering the existing system.
“I guess the question should be, should we first be identifying what pollutants we are trying to address, then pursue funding through the drain commission to actually address that,” he said.
Smits said there are various funding sources for that type of research, as well as volumes of existing data on contaminants in storm runoff. He supported the idea, as it would be good information to present to a board of determination to make the case for the project.
County Commissioner T. J. Andrews told commissioners the drainage district would likely include numerous houses she represents on the county board. Not only did she agree the problem the district is trying to address needs better defining, but she asked if other drains nearby posed more of a risk to water quality. Among them were outlets on public beaches that are frequently closed to swimming from bacterial contamination — too frequently, she argued.
City resident Sue Chang told commissioners she supported the move to create a drainage district. She also backed Werner’s suggestion to find out more about what’s going into the bay besides the visible stuff like cigarette butts.