Are We Using Up Taxpayer Goodwill Before We Get to the Things We Really Need?

Livingston has another new charge moving toward taxpayers this year: a stormwater utility.

And before this turns into another argument over whether stormwater matters, let's start with what we already know.

Stormwater problems are real. Livingston has aging drainage infrastructure, areas that flood and projects that will eventually need to be addressed.

But City Manager Grant Gager has also acknowledged something equally important:

Livingston is not currently required to launch this utility.

When Commissioner O'Neill asked whether the City was legally required to have a stormwater utility in place when Livingston reaches 10,000 residents, Gager said no. He explained that reaching that threshold would begin planning related to future regulatory compliance.

Two weeks later, he again described the benefit of acting now as getting a jump on future requirements while acknowledging that the requirement is not currently in place.

That raises a question that I think deserves more attention:

If this can wait, should it?

Not forever.

Maybe just long enough to recognize what Livingston property owners are already being asked to absorb and what much more important funding decisions are coming next.

O'Neill's concern deserves another look

During the July 21 budget discussion, Commissioner O'Neill suggested pushing the stormwater utility back a year.

His reason was straightforward: residents were already feeling overwhelmed by rising costs, particularly with the new Wellness Center tax coming onto property-tax bills.

That concern looks even more important when you step back and look at the whole picture.

Property owners are beginning to pay the new 40.84-mill Wellness Center levy.

Street maintenance assessments are increasing.

Water rates are increasing.

Wastewater rates are increasing.

And the proposed stormwater charge would add another $84 per year for a single-

family residence, regardless of the market value of the home.

Every one of those charges can be defended individually.

That's how these conversations usually happen.

It's only $84.

It's only a few dollars more for water.

It's only a small sewer increase.

The Wellness Center was voter-approved.

But citizens don't pay their bills individually in City Commission agenda packets.

They pay all of them at once.

And eventually taxpayers hit a point where it doesn't matter which increase came from which fund or which project.

They simply know their property-tax bill is much higher, their utilities cost more and the City is asking for more again.

That matters because Livingston already knows another very important funding question is coming.

What happens when we finally ask voters to fund EMS?

The current ambulance levy expires in 2028.

This is not a minor funding source.

Gager explained during the July 7 meeting that the Ambulance Fund supports new ambulances, medical supplies, EMS training and approximately half of Livingston Fire

Rescue employee salary and benefit costs.

It also supports community paramedic and the BRIDGE mobile mental health crisis team.

If that levy is not renewed, Gager acknowledged that the loss of funding could largely pull the City out of the ambulance business unless the Commission found another way to fund those services.

That is a consequential vote.

And when Gager discussed the upcoming EMS conversation on July 21, he made another important observation: recent tax measures have not exactly sailed through with voters.

He noted that the Wellness Center was one of the few successful recent levy examples and acknowledged that the electorate involved in the ambulance levy has shown less interest in supporting higher taxes through other recent school and road levy votes.

So the City already knows tax fatigue is real.

Which makes the order of these decisions incredibly important.

Imagine what happens if taxpayers receive their new property-tax bills with the Wellness Center levy, absorb higher assessments and utility costs, begin paying a new stormwater charge, and then shortly afterward are asked:

Will you also vote to continue funding EMS?

Some voters may not separate those questions.

They may simply think:

Enough.

And that “no” could land on the one levy that helps pay for ambulances, medical supplies, paramedics and roughly half of LFR personnel costs.

That is the risk I don't hear being discussed nearly enough.

Not every worthwhile project has the same urgency

There is a tendency in government budgeting to treat every identified need as though delaying it means neglecting it.

It doesn't.

The City has already spent years preparing for stormwater.

The August 18 staff report says work on the funding program has been underway since 2023. A preliminary engineering report has been completed. A feasibility study has been completed. Staff has spent additional time advancing those recommendations.

The broader work dates back even further. The City's July presentation referenced a drainage study beginning in 2018.

So postponing the new charge for a year would not erase years of planning.

The City could continue maintaining existing infrastructure, seeking grants, refining projects and determining which improvements actually need to occur first.

What it would do is give residents some breathing room.

And perhaps more importantly, it would preserve some taxpayer capacity for the funding decisions that truly cannot be avoided.

Maybe waiting a year gives us another advantage

There is another reason I think O'Neill's suggestion deserves serious consideration.

It gives Livingston more time to ask a question taxpayers should probably be asking more often:

Why are local property owners being treated as the primary funding source for all of this?

The City has already done much of the hard work. We have identified projects. We have engineering. We have a feasibility study. We know the scope of many of the problems.

So before we create another permanent local charge, why not use that year to aggressively pursue every available source of outside funding and determine what portion of these projects actually has to come from Livingston taxpayers?

There are federal programs specifically designed to help communities pay for this kind of infrastructure.

The EPA's Clean Water State Revolving Fund supports stormwater runoff mitigation and green infrastructure projects.

There is also the Sewer Overflow and Stormwater Reuse Municipal Grants Program, which provides grant funding for critical stormwater infrastructure.

And the federal WIFIA program can provide long-term, low-cost financing for eligible water and stormwater infrastructure projects.

None of that means Livingston automatically qualifies for every program or that outside funding will pay the entire bill.

But it does mean taxpayers deserve to know:

What have we applied for? What are we eligible for? What have we received? What have we been denied? And how much outside money could reduce the amount local residents ultimately have to pay?

Maybe the City is already aggressively pursuing these opportunities and the public simply has not been shown that strategy.

If so, let's see it.

But if we are not, then waiting a year does not have to mean doing nothing.

It could mean using that year to bring money into Livingston before asking Livingston property owners to supply all of it themselves.

That seems particularly important when we already know another major taxpayer decision is coming with the EMS levy.

The goal should not be to avoid paying anything locally. Communities have to invest in their own infrastructure.

But local taxpayers should not automatically be the first and only place we look when state and federal funding mechanisms exist specifically to help communities tackle projects like these.

We should be budgeting taxpayer tolerance too

Cities budget money.

Maybe they should also think about taxpayer tolerance as a limited resource.

Every new levy, assessment and fee draws from the same household budget.

And every time government tells residents that another increase is necessary, it asks them to trust that this particular need is important enough to justify paying more.

There are only so many times you can make that ask before people stop distinguishing between essential and discretionary spending.

That is why priority matters.

A Wellness Center may be valuable.

Stormwater improvements may be valuable.

Other capital projects may be valuable.

But ambulances showing up when someone calls 911 are not simply another amenity competing for space in a budget.

Fire and EMS are core public-safety services.

And if the City knows it will soon need voters to make another significant commitment to keep those services properly funded, then it should be thinking very carefully about how many other new costs it layers onto residents first.

This is not about saying no to every project.

It is about not tapping taxpayers out before we get to the things we cannot afford to lose.

This is where O'Neill may have had the right instinct

Push the stormwater utility back a year.

Keep doing the planning.

Keep pursuing outside funding.

Address truly urgent drainage problems where they occur.

Use that year to show the public what grants, state assistance and federal financing have been pursued, what has been secured and what local taxpayers would actually need to cover after those sources are exhausted.

But don't create another permanent funding stream this year simply because the groundwork has already been done.

The City Manager has acknowledged this isn't currently required.

We have time.

And with a major EMS funding decision approaching, perhaps the smartest thing Livingston can do with that time is decide what taxpayers must fund before asking them to fund everything we would like to do.

Because eventually voters will be asked to choose again.

And after a year of much larger property-tax bills and new charges, we should not be surprised if some of them answer:

We've already given enough.

The tragedy would be discovering that we spent their willingness to say yes before we asked the question that mattered most.