Last night, the Waco City Council approved a new monthly fee to help fund street repairs in a unanimous vote.
Earlier this month, local business owners packed into a conference room at the Waco Chamber of Commerce. They were there to hear the city’s presentation about its newly proposed street maintenance fees. Still donning their branded work polo shirts, many took notes on legal pads or their phones.
In November of 2023, the city announced the Street Maintenance Fee program would create a $10 per month fee for houses in Waco, plus a formula to determine what businesses would pay. But that didn’t work out the way the city planned.
"We found that there were some busts, I guess you would call it, in some of the land use assignments that created really high bills," Assistant City Manager Paul Cain said.
He says, after the businesses with the highest fees got letters informing them of the program, the office received strong pushback.
"So as we delved into it more and more and did more quality control on the data. Um, we found a lot of concerns," Cain said.
He says he and his colleagues spent months reassessing the data and developing a new formula. Now, single-family homes will pay a set fee of $2/month and business fees are based on the amount of traffic they create compared to a house.
"And that business may be, let's say it's equal to 10 houses. It creates the same traffic as 10 houses and that fee would be $20," he said.
Cain says the city thinks this is more fair.
"Some businesses create a lot more traffic than others," Cain said. "So it's a way for us to create a user fee that says, okay, if you generate more traffic than others, you should pay more of the burden to maintain the streets."
Cain says the new formula also accounts for businesses, like coffee shops, whose traffic mainly comes from people on their way to somewhere else.
The early September meeting at the Chamber of Commerce was organized by Rick Tullis, a local business owner. He says it gave people like him a chance to get their questions answered about the new fees.
"It was a little ambiguous on how it was calculated and how it was executed. So that was some of the concern," Tullis said.
Tullis says he heard a lot of questions from his peers in the business community beforehand, like...
"What was the real goal? Why did we need it? Why couldn’t you just use the property taxes that are already being paid to fix the streets?"
During the Q&A, many business owners expressed disagreement with the city’s plan, and didn’t feel like their were answered. Still, Tullis says he thinks it went okay.
"I think it's a healthy tension, right," Tullis said. "We need to, we need to challenge them to be as efficient and cost effective as possible. But also, you know, the citizenry needs to realize it's their city. And as business we need good roads to move our goods and services around."
Assistant City Manager Paul Cain says most of Waco's roads need some repair work and even with property tax revenue, there’s no wiggle room in the city’s budget.
"The street fee is a way to start raising revenues based on traffic created by a particular use, particular type of business. And that allows, we think, a more equitable approach to funding streets. You know, the more you create demand, the more you pay," Cain said.
Now that the city’s approved the new fee, it’ll be added to resident's monthly water bill starting October 1. Businesses that feel their fee is too high should email streetfee@wacotx.gov.
