It has never been the objective of the Town Council that residents pay more than one environmental fee for any individual property they own in Fountain Hills.

That was the clear message from the discussion at a special council meeting held on Feb. 9 to air concerns and issues that have arisen since the implementation of the fee on Jan. 1.

Town Manager Grady Miller said he was asking council for direction on how it wanted to address a number of “anomalies” that have come to light with the billing process.

“I believe it is the intent of the council that individual households pay only once,” Miller said.

“We had not anticipated people might be billed two or three times for the same property.”

Most of the issues seem to be the result of parcel information from the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office that is inconsistent with the objectives of the town’s billing process.

The town chose to use information from the assessor to create the billing list for the environmental fee.

Town Attorney Andrew McGuire said staff chose the parcel information because it could not legally base the fee on property size or value.

“The assumption was that the [assessor’s] would be the best record’s available,” McGuire said.

That comment resulted in an amused chuckle from council members and the small group of residents that had gathered to hear the discussion.

Town Finance Director Craig Rudolphy said he also believed it would be the best information to implement what the council had asked for.

“To my surprise and chagrin, the parcel information was infinitely more complicated than I anticipated,” Rudolphy said.

Rudolphy came to the meeting with a four-page memo listing unanticipated problems with how the parcel information defined various properties.

The assessor’s listings resulted in bills for the environmental fee being mailed to each parcel that received a tax bill. This very often created multiple billings for a single owner.

The issues on Rudolphy’s list includes such things as condominiums with common areas – some common areas are platted as separate parcels while other common areas are allocated to the individual condominium unit. Separate parcels received separate property tax bills, but not all common areas receive a property tax bill, so how are common areas to be treated?

“Duplex homes are sometimes receiving three property tax bills. This situation is due to the inconsistent approach implemented by the Assessor’s Office.”

In one subdivision, the developer has platted the land such that there are separate parcels for common areas. In this instance, one of the separate parcels happens to coincide with a street. The street, since it is a separate parcel, has received an environmental fee invoice.

Rudolphy’s memo contained some two dozen such situations and he and Miller indicated that staff had no authority to make any decision related to payment.

Council members came to the conclusion that the parcel listings are not the most efficient method to be billing the fee. They discussed other ideas and came to a conclusion that staff should attempt to acquire an address listing to use for the billing.

It was noted that while the Sanitary District and EPCOR Water were unwilling to participate in billing the fee, it was not clear whether either is willing to provide the town with an address list of their customers.

A list of customers for either the water company or Sanitary District would be smaller than the parcel listing, resulting in a lesser than planned return.

The town had identified 15,000 parcels and anticipated a fee collection of approximately $540,000. Rudolphy reported that as of Feb. 9, the collection contractor had received $378,975 from 10,527 parcels.

The council voted unanimously to have staff review the parcel file and attempt to identify any addresses that were double billed. The motion also gave Miller the authority as Town Manager to make determinations about further questions that arise regarding the billing. He said he would make such reviews based on equity and fairness.