3.3 ASSESSING COMMUNITY STORMWATER NEEDS

As noted in Section 3.2, one of the first and most important tasks to be completed prior to full-scale public information and education activities take place is the definition of the stormwater management needs of the community. There are two sides to the stormwater needs: (1) what the government needs in order to accomplish the mission of the stormwater management program; and (2) what the public perceives as the critical stormwater improvements that need to be made by the government. Provided below is a discussion of each of these perspectives.

3.3.1 Municipal Stormwater Management Needs

Existing information already available to many communities can help identify a preliminary list of stormwater management needs for the community. Two sources of particularly useful information should be highlighted. The first source is complaint records. Such records indicate where a stormwater problem has been recognized as important enough to be reported by the public. Complaints may come directly from the public or through elected officials.

The second source of very useful information comes from the experiences of municipal stormwater engineering and maintenance staff. Staff members who have been in the community for some time can pinpoint specific flooding and water quality problem areas easily. To support this information, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Loss List, which is compiled after a significant flood event, can be used.

As information is gathered about problems and problem areas, staff should compile photographic and video evidence of the concerns. Too often, neither the elected officials nor the public understand the source or the potential remedies of a problem until photographs or videos of the problem are shown. This means that during storm events, municipal staff should cover the community with photographs, documenting public concerns.

From these sources, the community should create the preliminary map identifying stormwater problem areas with a dot or symbol. The map will be refined through public input. For obvious reasons, this map can be called a measle board of stormwater problems. Most of the problems will be flooding complaints and some will be water quality related. Each problem is an irritant, so to speak, which must be remedied. Some of the problems can be combined into problem areas (e.g., stormwater flooding complaints within a subdivision) because alternative analyses and remedies will likely be provided all at once.

Through master planning, basin planning, and sometimes, common sense, each of the problems and problem areas can be associated with a remedial action. For example, some problems can be solved with increased maintenance while some need extensive capital improvements. Once the remedial actions for each problem and problem areas have been identified, the list of actions should be ranked. One way to do this is to identify benefits and costs of the remedial actions. Benefits and costs may include structural flooding remediation, nuisance flood remediation, wetland restoration, water quality improvements, permitting ease, reliability, citizens affected, maintenance ease and associated recreational amenities. Costs may include construction costs, land acquisition costs, long-term maintenance costs, resulting environmental damage or disturbance. These criteria can be equally or variably weighted according to the values of the community. A numerical value can then be assigned to each action related to each benefit and cost. For example, a particular activity, such as building a stormwater pond, may be highly rated for stormwater runoff pollution control, but may have high acquisition and maintenance costs. While another activity, such as a residential swale, may be only moderately rated for pollution control, but highly rated for construction and maintenance costs. Once assigned numerical values, the activities are assigned a value that is the sum of the numeric value times the weight, which yields a single, objective value for the activity. The values are subsequently sorted from high to low, and the result is a priority ranking of remedial activities. This methodology provides the community with a preliminary stormwater management needs list for capital and maintenance projects.

The final ranking of remedial actions should be categorized into about three areas: high priority, medium priority, and "not-in-my-lifetime" priority. This is because the actual implementation of individual projects may change from time to time for a number of reasons:

• § While an activity may be very important, another project should be completed first to allow the higher priority project to function. For example, flood complaints may come from a subdivision where the remedial activity is to upsize the stormwater system. However, if the system into which the subdivision discharges is also undersized but a lower priority, the remedy for the subdivision will not work. In this case, the lower priority project may need to be completed first. This example may not occur depending on the priority ranking process.
• § A particular remedial activity may become more important because of a specific rainfall event.
• A particular remedial activity may have the special interest of an elected official and some flexibility is necessary for changes to priorities.
• The availability of grant or loan funding may alter the phasing or priority of particular remedial actions.

The public should and can be involved in this ranking process. The criteria and their weights are subject to public input. This can be accomplished by having the public list potential criteria and then rank them during public meetings or workshops.

Identification and ranking of stormwater problem areas are important aspects in determining stormwater management needs. The ranking can identify funding needs in the short- and long-term. It can also provide elected officials an objective ranking of projects which can be methodically completed and which specifically address the stormwater complaints (measle board). As the list is shortened because of completed projects, the list also becomes the measure of success once additional funding becomes available.

There are many ways to categorize the elements of stormwater management for government entities. The list provided below is not exhaustive and not all stormwater programs contain every element. The purpose of the list is to help the public information team identify all of the components of the program that may be part of the definition of needs. Pictures can be collected of each component of the stormwater management program to help elected officials and the public to understand the stormwater program elements.

Costs for each of the elements need to be defined or estimated for the existing stormwater management program, as well as for an expanded program, which may be needed to meet public needs. The enhanced program, for example, may include increased maintenance because the public has complained about trash and overgrowth at stormwater ponds.

Once the list of program elements has been compiled, the annual expenditures and future budget for each of the elements would be determined. For the expenditures, previous financial reports should be reviewed to define labor, other operating expenses, and capital expenditures. The sources of funding should also be determined. The expenditures for each component should then be extrapolated for at least five years to allow for inflation. The average annual increase for previous years can be used as an estimate of program funding growth and inflation. If a master plan or some other method to identify and rank capital projects is available, then the capital improvement program costs can also be added to the budgeted need projection. These projected costs will lead to a 5-year, or more, projection of program costs based upon the existing program.

Two additional elements should be added to the projection or program costs. First, based upon the understanding of public needs, enhancements to the stormwater program can be added to the overall program costs. For example, if the prevailing complaint is maintenance, then additional costs should be added to the O&M budget so that the budget needs match the public demand. Second, there may be additional budget needs for administration of the stormwater utility fee itself. As an example, if the rate structure includes a credit for private stormwater facilities, then the stormwater management program may have to include annual inspections to confirm maintenance of the private facilities. Also, there will be administrative costs for maintenance of the stormwater utility database with new customers and modified parcel reference areas (impervious areas or combination of impervious and pervious areas, depending on the choice of rate structure).

Table 3-1, on the following page, provides an example of a stormwater program budget estimate. The program has been categorized in this case into only five elements: administration, planning, O&M, NPDES, and CIP. Additional costs have been included for stormwater utility implementation. Also, in this example, a simple spreadsheet calculation is offered to allow a pay-as-you-go or bond-financed capital improvement program. It should also be noted that, for this example, the millage associated with the total budget amount is offered as a comparison. Clearly, these estimates must be based upon the total assessed value within the community after homestead has been excluded.

Previously, the stormwater management needs identification has been mostly internal; that is, the community acceptance team has been working with existing municipal information and staff to identify stormwater needs. The next step is harder: identifying public interests. The first element of this should have already been completed in the compilation of the measle board. This map shows the location of public complaints and indicates, at a minimum, where the public has noted stormwater needs. More information is required, however, and further contact with the public is warranted.

Specific methods of public information, education, and interaction are discussed in detail below. For the identification of public demand for stormwater services, a method that allows feedback must be used to offer ample public input. Alternative methods include neighborhood (or town) meetings, opinion surveys, questionnaires, workshops, and stakeholder meetings. For the purpose of identifying public demands for service, the following suggestions are offered:

• The meetings should not be general "gripe" sessions and, for this reason, they should be led by a respected facilitator, generally not municipal staff, and kept small in size. Furthermore, the meetings should be planned in order to receive comments in a specific order: first to identify overall stormwater goals or mission statement; second to prioritize goals and objectives; third to confirm measles on the measle board and problem areas; and last to provide complaints.
• The meetings should offer education at the same time. For example, prior to the meeting, a set of tables could be strategically placed to showcase stormwater management achievements and general program elements. The measle board should also be shown on a scale at which the public can identify their own property. This will also allow more one-on-one dialogue that offers an opportunity for meaningful input.
• While one of the purposes of the meetings is a dialogue, all of the questions posed need not be answered at the meeting, especially those for which specific answers are not available. As noted previously, incomplete or premature answers can be deleterious to the awareness program. Unanswered questions should be answered, nevertheless, either in other meetings or in a newsletter/brochure format. The questions should be answered within a specified timeframe to maintain credibility.
• There are several distinct advantages of using a Stormwater Task Force. Controversial issues can be tested in the task force environment before they are aired in a public meeting, and members of the task force can facilitate public meetings to encourage edifying comments rather than general gripes or comments aimed at staff or elected officials.
• Whatever methods are used to obtain input on public needs, the first effort should be directed toward the critical audiences. Critical audiences may be focus groups and public information targets (see Section 3.2.6 above), stakeholder group members (see Section 3.4 below), or specific portions of the municipality, which have the highest number of complaints shown on the measle board.

The final issue related to assessing public needs and interests is timing. It has been the collective experience of stormwater managers that public interest in stormwater management is high during high rainfall periods and low during droughts. Therefore, to obtain a realistic public response regarding stormwater concerns, assessment of public needs should occur during the rainy seasons, generally summer and fall in Florida.