Senator Bob Hertzberg hosted an SB 231 focused webinar earlier
this week called “Getting It Right: Stormwater Stewardship.” The
Senator told viewers that his main goal in authoring SB 231 was
to help communities capture and use water locally, in part, to
help reduce water costs. Along with Senator Hertzberg the webinar
featured Sean Bothwell, Policy Director at California
Coastkeeper Alliance and Attorney Michael Colantuono.
The key takeaway and suggestion from municipal finance expert
Colantuono was for local governments to be cautious in using the
property related fee exemption provided for under Prop. 218. He
strongly suggested that SB 231 be used in conjunction with AB
2403 (Rendon 2014) and encouraged local governments to use
stormwater fees on projects that collect stormwater which can
directly benefit either sanitary sewers or a water supply; this
discussion can be found 20:50 on the hosted video on the webinar
which can be found at this link.
