The Berlin Town Council has voted unanimously to begin billing residents and businesses later this year for the establishment of a stormwater utility.
That decision comes in the face of a standing-room only crowd this past Monday by local citizens who sharply criticized the plan.
Under attack was a University of Maryland report that proposed a stormwater utility with an implementation fee as the best way to raise the $8.3 million needed to fix the town’s flooding problems.
Local property owners would pay $50 a year while nonresidential property owners would pay $25 for every 21-hundred square feet of impervious surface.
Lynn Musgrave, the town’s finance director, said the residential fees would raise $70-thousand a year…while non-residential fees should bring in $200-thousand.
