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County fees

October 14, 2009

Complaints’ focus: Bills for flood protection

Number of overbilling calls regarding residential apartments category surprises county authority head.

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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Lorraine Bilby expected to get a bill in the mail for $46.85 from the Luzerne County Flood Protection Authority.

She was floored when she checked her mail on Tuesday and found a bill for $225.48 for the double-block home she owns in Forty Fort.

Bilby was one of hundreds of people who bombarded either authority Director Jim Brozena, Don Wilkinson Agency – the company hired to mail the bills and collect the fees – and authority Chairman and county Commissioner Steve Urban with phone calls, questioning or complaining about their bills.

Bilby said the home contains two five-room rental units. She can’t see passing along the fee to her tenants – an elderly woman and a single mom – in the form of a rent increase.

“I don’t think the average person figured they would get charges like this,” Bilby said.

Brozena said his office used the county’s property reassessment database to establish the category for fees.

For example, a double-block home with both sides rented out is considered “residential apartments,” which falls into the flood protection fees “commercial property” category because the owner is not living there, he said.

“But that’s crazy, because it’s one house,” Bilby said.

The fee for residential property owners is $46.85 per year for properties assessed under $100,000 and $93.70 for those at or over $100,000. The fee for commercial, industrial and tax-exempt properties is $225.48 for those assessed under $250,000, $450.96 for those at or over $250,000 but lower than $750,000 and $676.44 for those over $750,000.

Brozena said problems with the residential apartments category, which includes about 1,200 of the approximately 15,300 properties in the flood zone, “came as a bit of a surprise. Residential apartments in our mind applied to a three-unit facility, but a lot of calls were from people with duplexes,” he said.

Steve Nowroski, Forty Fort code enforcement officer, said rental structures in the borough with three or more units are commercial; those with two units or less are residential.

Brozena said other data he’s recently seen identify properties with five or more rental units as commercial. He said he and his staff “need to do a little more research” on the issue and determine how many units in a structure would classify it as commercial.

“There may need to be some re-issuing of bills for properties that fall into this category. … We’ll work our way through this because we want to be as accurate as possible,” he said.

In addition to calls from people who say their property type was misclassified, Brozena said other calls fall into two categories: from people who said they knew nothing about the fee and others who said they got a bill but don’t live in the flood zone.

The media have been reporting on issues with the fee since it was first proposed in late 2008, when county commissioners said they could no longer fund operations and maintenance of the flood protection system using general fund revenues because of budget deficits. The fees are expected to raise about $1.9 million annually. The Times Leader reported in mid-September that the bills would be mailed out soon.

Anyone who says their property was improperly classified or that another problem exists with their bill should call Brozena at 825-1601.

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