Inequitable Stormwater Fee Structures Undercharging High-Runoff Properties

$1.5M-$3M annually in unrecovered past-due stormwater fees and ongoing revenue leakage from properties that remain miscategorized or improperly assessed post-transition • $200K-600K annually in legal defense costs, administrative hearing costs, and potential fee refunds if calculation methodology found indefensible; 1-2 lawsuits per year averaging $100K-200K each due to lack of audit trail • $2M-$5M annually per municipality in unrecovered stormwater fees from high-runoff properties (commercial/industrial vacant parcels) that were undercharged under tax-rate-based or water-usage-based structures

Grants administrator manually calculates revenue shortfall by comparing budgeted maintenance costs vs. actual collections from old fee structure; uses Excel models built by consultants (not maintained internally); builds grant case study showing equity improvements post-migration; cites external reports (Black & Veatch, NJ Future) rather than own quantified data • Legal counsel manually pulls historical Excel fee models; reconstructs fee calculation for individual parcel from archived GIS shapefiles; prepares PowerPoint decks showing aerial imagery and manual area calculations; legal briefs reference printed PDF reports from consultants; no centralized audit trail of fee decisions • Manual aerial imagery review, Excel spreadsheets for impervious area calculations, paper field inspection forms, GIS tools operated manually property-by-property, ad-hoc email coordination with engineering and accounting teams