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City Commissioners have approved a compromise to cover $69 million in overdue stormwater management, flood protection, drainage, and mandated lake-restoration projects that city officials say can no longer wait.
Commissioners voted 6-1 on Monday, May 4, to approve a plan that will raise the residential stormwater service charge by $1.17 a year for the next decade to cover infrastructure improvements — a more gradual increase than the plan city staff proposed in December.
For a typical single-family customer now paying $9.72 a month, the charge will rise to $10.89 on Jan. 1, 2027, and continue to increase annually until it reaches $21.42 in January 2036.
Monday’s vote came four weeks before the start of a new hurricane season, with memories of flooding from Hurricane Milton still fresh for many residents.
City officials say the $69 million in necessary work falls into two broad buckets:
- Flood protection and drainage
- Water quality and lake restoration
The rate increase will create a dedicated local funding source for both.
The Commission debates timeline
Commissioner Guy LaLonde Jr., the lone dissenting vote, argued the city is moving too slowly on one of its most expensive infrastructure problems.
“It’s not about ‘if’ we’re going to flood again, but ‘when’ we’re going to flood again,” LaLonde said.
He urged the Commission to consider raising rates over five or eight years rather than 10, arguing that the $69 million price tag will only get more expensive.
“If we’re dealing with an average of 4% to 6% increase with building costs and materials … we’re easily looking above $112 million,” LaLonde said. “We are overburdened already, and I think it’s time that we deal with the stormwater head-on and improve our infrastructure.”
The rest of the Commission rejected LaLonde’s argument, saying the city spent months negotiating a compromise and risked further delay by reopening it.
“You can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” Coney said.
“In a perfect world, we probably would’ve went with the first plan. Be we don’t live in a perfect world,” he said. “If we don’t do this, then we go back into that process where we’re already four or five months down the road.”
Commissioner Stephanie Madden said the revised plan was better for Lakeland’s economy. “Just like residents are struggling with high prices, businesses are struggling, too,” she said.
A compromise reached
The original proposal, based on a rate study by Geosyntec Consultants, would have:
- raised monthly residential rates by $1.55 annually for five years
- cut the stormwater credit for qualifying private drainage systems from 75% to 50%
- taken effect March 1, 2026
The final version approved Monday:
- raises monthly residential rates by $1.17 annually for 10 years
- keeps the 75% stormwater credit in place
- delays implementation until Jan. 1, 2027
That compromise emerged after pushback from Lakeland Economic Development Council (LEDC) President Steve Scruggs, who called the original proposal “rare and extreme” and said it would hit large commercial property owners too hard.
The new plan preserves the 75% stormwater credit for qualifying private retention ponds and drainage systems, meaning businesses that manage much of their own runoff avoid a steeper increase than they would have seen under the original proposal.
“There’s been a lot of work put into this,” City Manager Shawn Sherrouse told commissioners during Friday’s agenda study, crediting staff with working through the details and reaching a compromise the LEDC could support.
Changing the ‘ERU’ formula
Commissioners changed the formula used to calculate stormwater fees by lowering the “equivalent residential unit,” or ERU, from 5,000 square feet to 3,850 square feet.
That matters most for large commercial properties, whose bills are based on how much hard surfaces — roofs, parking lots, pavement — shed water into the city’s system.
By lowering the ERU, those properties will be treated as the equivalent of more homes.
And ultimately, the rate increase is larger — rising to $21.42 per home monthly by January 2036, instead of $17.47 by October 2030.
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