Two Ironton City Councilmen are looking for a way buy the city more time to search for a way to temper the effects of the stormwater utility fee.

Bob Isaac and Chuck O'Leary proposed a new ordinance at last week's city council meeting that would repeal the current fee and replace it with a streamlined

$4 version.

Isaac said he believed the current fee, $14.55 per residential property and $14.55 for every 3,000-square feet of impermeable surface of a business property,is just too much, too soon.

"We don't have any idea what this thing is going to cost - the implementation of this plan - but we've already set up a fee that in 20 years will generate $20 million," Isaac said. "Yet, we still don't know what it's going to cost."

Isaac said he also worries that the fee will have a negative impact on some of the levies and fees that will be on the ballot this November.

The councilman said he was most concerned about the floodwall, which could make the stormwater overflow issue much worse were it to fail.

"We don't know what effect this is going to have on the elections. We don't think there's going to be anything passed," Isaac said.

"If the flood levy fails, and if we get an unfavorable ruling from the state on the flood fee we've implemented, we're not going to have any flood protection. The $20 million or whatever that we spend on the CSO plan, that's not going to keep one drop of water out of this city."

In O'Leary and Isaac's revised plan, the current storm water utility fee would be dropped, and a new charge of $4 per parcel of land within city limits would be put into place.

Isaac said that this funding would buy the city some time, allowing them to conduct the study being required by the EPA without stockpiling the cash that would be necessary to implement the resulting plan. The interim time, Isaac said, could be spent looking for other funding sources.

"When the Clean Water Act was implemented, they realized there would be some cities that wouldn't be able to afford it," Isaac said.

"So I think we need to delay it, see if we can get grants, if we can't I think we need to appeal, I don't know who we'd appeal to, but we need to tell them we're one of the cities that can't afford it."

Isaac said that at the very least, reducing the fee now would help to bring business in to Ironton, giving more income tax revenue to work with.

"I think we've lost a business already because of what this fee would cost these industries," Isaac said. "I'm afraid there are some businesses in Ironton that are just marginal, and they'll just fold Š or move into the county."

Although the measure to make the ordinance an emergency (which would have circumvented its first and second readings) failed, Isaac plans to give the ordinance a second reading at the following meeting and try once more to make it an emergency measure.