Stormwater trouble

A year ago, Mayor Dwight C. Jones told the Free Press he would work with Richmond Public Schools to resolve its then unpaid $1.1 million bill for stormwater control.

“We’ll work out a payment plan and then take care of it in the next budget cycle,” the mayor said blithely.

Apparently, he and his administration got so busy thinking about a baseball stadium, a children’s hospital and an international bike race, that item just slipped through the cracks.

So a few months ago, when Mayor Jones introduced his spending plan for city operations and support of public schools, his budget team didn’t earmark any money for the school system to pay the outstanding stormwater bill and clear its debt to the Department of Public Utilities.

As you may recall, Mayor Jones boasted he was increasing money for schools, although most of the $2.1 million in new funds was designed to cover the school system’s increased cost for resuming responsibility for a truancy prevention program the city previously operated.

Meanwhile, the stormwater debt got no mention as City Council members revamped the mayor’s budget to steer $9 million in additional operating funds to RPS.

Nor was the stormwater bill mentioned when the School Board approved the final version of its budget in early June.

So once again, this bill has surfaced, and the city again is demanding payment from the school system, just as the city auditor urged in an audit on the stormwater program issued June 15. The city wants RPS to pay at least half the bill, which has now grown to more than $1.2 million.

It’s a ridiculous problem. This is about shifting city tax dollars from one pocket to another — from city coffers to city schools to city public utilities. But it’s a real problem for schools, which has set its budget based on its appropriation from the city and already has made cuts to come into balance.

It’s true the school system is supposed to set aside money to pay off its stormwater debt, which has grown since 2010, when RPS stopped paying anything.

Every property owner is required to pay a stormwater bill to help support the city’s stormwater utility. That includes churches, the state and federal governments — and schools. The city uses the money to meet a federal mandate to control the runoff from rain and, thus, reduce the flow of pollution into streams, the James River and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay.

This should have been an easy fix for a mayor who has been in office six and a half years. The finance wizards for the city and the school system just needed to sit down and work out a payment plan.

We are surprised and disappointed that this simple bit of business was left undone.

But then, this administration still has not completed the audit of the city books for fiscal year 2014, 13 months after the books were closed on that spending cycle.

Perhaps we are expecting too much.