Protest Your Drainage Fee Via the World's Most Boring How-To Video

Categories: Spaced City
The city has announced the procedures it will use to hear protests over assessed drainage fees, and they look like they're about as much fun as protesting your property tax assessment.

Worse, they involve watching the above, five and a half minutes of instruction on how to use the "You think you can do better" tool to DIY your own estimate of what your fee should be.

It all comes down to how much "impervious surface" you have on your property.

The city's definition: "Impervious surface is the portion of a property that is covered by a house, garage, driveway, sidewalk, deck, swimming pool or other structures that will impact the City's drainage conveyance system."

Although the fine print laid out how much the fee would be, the estimate used in ads and voter information for the referendum was done via a property example smaller than a lot of people have. So there was some surprise when the "$5 or $6 a month" touted in the ads turned into double or triple that in assessments.

Mayor Annise Parker exempted the first 1,000 square feet to try to assuage critics.

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1 comments
Jaime_v_garza
Jaime_v_garza

The Drainage Fee is Highway robbery by the City of Houston. We have reported heavy flooding several times and the City has yet to fix the problem. If you go to the 5000 block of Park Dr, Houston, Texas, 77023, the folks living there need to wade in waterto and from their homes. Yet the city has done nothing to alleviate the problem.

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