Opponents of the city’s new stormwater utility were frustrated at Tuesday’s El Paso City Council meeting about how hard it would be to kill it, take it away from the water utility or force a further reduction in rates.

And city officials supporting the utility and its mission to protect homes and businesses from flooding were also frustrated by the apparent willingness to run from problems that past City Councils refused to face.

At the end of two hours of listening to complaints and haggling over what to do, the council defeated East Valley city Rep. Eddie Holguin’s request to have the city attorney’s office prepare an ordinance for a future vote to have the City Council take control of the stormwater utility away from the water utility’s Public Service Board.

The measure went down by the same 4-3 vote that has decided almost every important issue before the council for the past year.

Mayor John Cook kept one idea alive by asking the PSB and its CEO, Ed Archuleta, to have the 20-member committee of community leaders and organization representatives who reportedly agreed on the new utility’s rates earlier this year take another look at the rates in light of the public reaction.

The lack of a better solution prompted an angry Holguin to ask, “How do we make the PSB accountable to the people. How does the public take control of that monstrosity?”

In deciding to create a stormwater utility last year to address long-ignored drainage problems, City Council handed it to the PSB, which oversees the city’s water and wastewater system.

The PSB planned to go after the problems aggressively and established a rate structure that put 60 percent of the load on owners of nonresidential property.

When the first bills for March hit mailboxes in April, they shocked and angered businesses and other large property owners whose bills were high because they were based on their rooftops and asphalt that create runoff.

Northeast resident Ben Gomersall said he recognizes the need to address the stromwater problem, but he and his wife also recognize that there are more problems than money.

“We need to remember how really poor El Paso is,” he said. “As a retired teacher, my wife and I have seen our purchasing power decrease by $700 over the past eight years. Most of this purchasing power has been lost $5 or $10 at a time.

“City Council, please listen to the people. Make this thing go away.”

He said there’s no question El Paso has a problem it needs to address.

“We need stormwater protection and must address this in an expedient manner, but we don’t need to keep up with Tucson, Phoenix and Timbuktu.”

Austin lawyer Doug Caroom, who specializes in water issues, advised the council Tuesday that the Texas Legislature may have foreseen the political problems that cities creating stormwater utilities and new fees would encounter.

“Sometimes it’s surprising how good the insights of the Legislature are into political problems because they basically said if you’re going to try this, you’ve got to try it for five years before you can dissolve it,” Caroom said.

The utility’s rates, he said, have to be based on the varying benefits that the ratepayers receive, which means the utility cannot charge flat rates that would treat everyone the same.

“PSB doesn’t have a whole lot of flexibility in how this is set up,” he said. “The big flexibility is how much money do you want to spend on drainage.

“I recall when this whole thing was getting started, PSB didn’t ask for this job. They were a very reluctant bride at this wedding for just these reasons. … There is going to be some political heat.”

Archuleta said the PSB, which employed Caroom’s law firm and consultants in setting up the stormwater utility, knew there would be problems.

He said some of them were addressed last week when the five-member PSB reduced the two-month-old rates by 37 percent. The PSB will look at them again in three months.

The rate reduction lowered the utility’s budget to $17 million from $21 million.

School districts’ bills won’t be nearly as high as has been reported, he said, adding the El Paso school district’s monthly bills will be about $8,600; Ysleta’s, about $6,500 and Socorro’s about $3,300.

“So it’s not, $42,000,” he said, referring to a reported amount of Ysleta school district’s first monthly bill.

He said the only fair way to set up the rates was based on areas covered by rooftops and asphalt, which particularly impacted car dealers, malls and shopping centers, school districts and churches.

“The reason you’re the position you’re in is because of political decisions made over decades not to fund stormwater in the city,” he said. “You know that. The sins of our fathers.

“I’ve been here long enough. I’ve seen public works directors come up here before to ask for projects. I’ve seen the lists; I’ve seen them ask for planning. Never been done. But if that’s the way you want to continue to do it, all I’m saying is … you need to take the whole thing back.”

David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@epmediagroup.com and 351-0605.