Norris to hold hearing on proposed $3 utility fee
Norris residents will get a chance to comment in person this coming Monday (Feb. 10) about a proposed $3 monthly fee added to utility bills to help fund the city’s new Stormwater Utility Department.
A public hearing will be held at 5:30 p.m., just prior to the February City Council meeting at 6 p.m., on Ordinance 689, passed on first reading Jan. 13, to begin assessing the fee on each residential property inside the city limits.
During the council meeting to follow, the council is expected to consider passing the ordinance on second and final reading.
Also on the public hearing agenda is consideration of Ordinance 692, which passed on first reading Jan. 13, to modify the Tree Commission’s rules on where trees may be planted on city right-of-way.
At 5 p.m. Monday, prior to the public hearings, the council will hold a workshop to discuss amending fees and policies for renting out city facilities to private groups for parties and other events.
Then at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, the council plans another workshop to discuss a suggested new right-of-way ordinance, which would regulate what residents would be allowed to build, plant or install on city right-of-way adjacent to their own property.
The council set up the Stormwater Department last March to oversee the city’s stormwater-collection system, with the goal of helping the city avoid future trouble with state environmental authorities over raw sewage spills resulting from stormwater runoff into the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Council members in January also agreed to negotiate with an engineering company, Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc., of Knoxville, to research and map out the city’s current stormwater collection system as the basis for repairs and upgrades.
On a unanimous vote, the council passed on first reading Ordinance 689, which “establishes a base rate for stormwater user fees, setting the amount of $3 for single-family residential units.
The measure also would set monthly rates of $3 to $10 for commercial properties.
Last March, with Councilman Chuck Nicholson abstaining, the council passed Ordinance 672, titled, “An Ordinance of the City of Norris, Tennessee, Establishing a Stormwater Utility.”
The intent of the measure was to set fees for residents and businesses that would pay for the operations of the department, which would operate separately from the city’s water works and public works departments.
In its efforts to stop excess runoff of stormwater into the city’s sanitary sewer system – which has caused the city to run afoul of state environmental regulations – the city has set up the new department under control of the city manager. It will be led by a director, still to be hired, to oversee the operation.
The goal is to create a better system of managing stormwater runoff than what the city now has, which includes some stormwater collection lines mostly along city streets.
But the problem is that during periods of heavy rain, stormwater infiltrates the city’s sanitary sewer system, causing an unmanageable flow to the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
There, the excess stormwater mixes with raw sewage, and because it can quickly overwhelm the treatment facility, this combination of sewage and stormwater ends up bypassing the treatment plant along East Norris Road, and gets dumped into nearby Buffalo Creek.
Since early 2022, Norris has been under a “director’s order” from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to clean up its discharge of sewage into the creek, since the department found the city in violation of water-quality regulations concerning those discharges bypassing the sewage-treatment plant.
The city hired Cannon & Cannon Consulting Engineers of Knoxville to create the plan to remedy the violations.
That plan, submitted to the council in May 2022, called for making the required repairs beginning as soon as possible, with an estimated completion date of late 2028.
Under the engineers’ plan, the price for the bulk of the work was estimated to be $5.488 million, with a potential bill as high as $6.6 million.
That does not include the possibility the city might need to install a 750,000-gallon holding tank for stormwater runoff, at an additional cost of more than $2.1 million.
The stormwater management program would get its operating budget from the user fees paid by city residents, businesses and industries under Ordinance 689.
Under state law, utilities are not allowed to be funded by property taxes.
In other business this coming Monday night:
• The council is expected to approve a bid package to put its trash-collection contract out for consideration by qualifying firms.
The council decided in January that it would rather seek bids on a new contract, after receiving a proposal from the current contractor, Waste Connections, Inc.
That proposal would have raised the city’s monthly cost by $2,000, or about $4.29 per residential customer.
That proposal also would have reduced collections of recyclables to every other week, instead of weekly, and would have stopped backyard pickup of trash from cans for many residents – primarily those whose property would allow them to put their trash cans at the curb weekly for automatic pickup.
A new waste-collection contract would need to be in place by the end of the current one, June 30.
City Manager Adam Ledford said the city already has three waste-collection companies interested in bidding on the contract.
Mayor Chris Mitchell said the proposal already submitted by Waste Connections, which has held the contract for several years, would mean “We would be paying more for less.”
