By Mary Ellen Slayter
Capital News Service
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005
ANNAPOLIS- Some Maryland homeowners may be jolted by an
unpleasant surprise when they open their property tax bills next
year.
Instead of being billed for one year's worth of the state's new
"flush tax," homeowners with septic tanks - including about 30,000 in
Anne Arundel County - will be billed $52.50, instead of the $30 a year
they might have anticipated.
The flush tax, formally known as the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal
Bays Restoration Fund, is intended to support efforts to clean up the
state's waterways.
But while the goal of the program might be simple, implementing it
has not been.
It's a state program, but Maryland delegated
responsibility for collecting the fee to Baltimore City and the state's
23 counties. Several counties - including Anne Arundel - were not ready,
and their delays mean that homeowners will have to pay double to catch
up.
"There are going to be some people who aren't happy," said Kerry A.
Topovski, Anne Arundel County's director of environmental health.
Property owners who are tied to municipal water or sewer systems will
not feel the impact of the delay in collections. They have already been
paying $2.50 tacked onto their monthly water utility bills. For septic
owners, however, the fee is $30 a year and the various counties decided
how to collect it. In most cases it will be added to the property tax
bill. The wastewater charge went into effect in January, but collections
for the septic system fee did not begin until last month.
Jay Prager, deputy program manager in the Maryland Department of the
Environment's wastewater treatment permits division, said the delays
were not surprising, given the variation in the records each county
keeps on its septic users, which number some 420,000 across the state.
Some counties had databases already; others had to put together the
information from other sources, Prager said. Availability of data and
personnel were both factors. "We would have liked to have billed by
July, but not every county was ready."
Because they had to build their databases of septic users from
scratch in many cases, Prager said, "the counties that took longer may
actually be more accurate."
Before the flush tax was created, Anne Arundel did not have a
complete inventory of its septic users, Topovski said. There are some
very old homes in the county, she said, and septic systems can date back
to the 1900s.
Her office was able to update its list of septic users by comparing
different databases and by visiting many of the properties in person.
Prager said his agency has worked with the counties from the
beginning, as well as other state agencies, to pull together the data
needed to send out bills. "We were really pleasantly surprised by the
amount of effort the other agencies put in."
Some county officials said they were disappointed by the support from
the state. Pamela Howard, Cecil County's treasurer, called the process
"a nightmare."
Like Topovski, she said the hardest thing was determining who had a
septic system. Trailer parks and campgrounds posed the biggest
challenges. Her county will begin collecting the fee in December, a
prorated $22.50 covering the length of time the law has been in effect.
In July they will be billed again for the full $30.
Maryland's Department of the Environment expects the program to
generate an estimated $65 million a year from people with sewer and
water and $12.6 million from septic system users. The money collected
from property owners served by municipal water systems will be used to
upgrade wastewater treatment plants. The revenue from septic tank users
will be used to upgrade or replace failing septic systems and to provide
financial assistance to farmers to help plant cover crops to prevent
nutrient runoff.
Overall, the goal is to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus discharge,
which contributes to the "dead zone" in the Chesapeake Bay. It's that
benefit that Topovski said she plans to point out to those who contact
her office to complain about the fee. But she knows that will not be
enough to placate everyone, especially those whose property tax bills
are a little bigger than they expected. |
