“They just look like ditches.To the city public works department, they’re conveyance – part of an increasingly complex system of culverts, pipes and swales that channel rainwater toward Puget Sound from points uphill.Their upkeep is tied to the health of the road system, preventing erosion and costly reconstruction and repaving. They also prevent slides and home damage near slopes.If you drive on the road or walk on a sidewalk or live anywhere there’s a cross-culvert, you benefit from the service, said Melva Hill, stormwater technician for the city.But as the workload ditches represent comes into clearer focus, the cost of their maintenance is going up. For the first time since 1990, the city’s storm and surface water utility rate is increasing, from the present $36.84 pear year to $48 for a single-family residence. Rates for commercial and undeveloped parcels, which are charged based on the size of impervious roof and driveway surfaces, also will increase. The higher fee will appear on this year’s property tax statements, to be mailed out by the county Feb. 14.In fact, the jump to $48 per year is seen as the first toward an eventual rate of $84 per year, approved by the city council in 1999.By comparison, residents in unincorporated Kitsap County pay $45 per year; in unincorporated King County, $85; Seattle, $72; Bellevue, $110; Redmond, $138.The money goes toward an array of projects, from topographic studies to fieldwork with the spade and rake. And, being maintenance, there is no end to the work.In the fieldMark Bartholomew and Mike Bidlencik know what to look for in a properly maintained ditch.A nice even level where the water flows, said Bidlencik, a public works crew member on ditch duty along Arrow Point Road. No whoopteedoos – making a washboard gesture with his hands – or whatever you want to call them.The pair crew a Ditchmaster, a main tool for maintenance along the island’s 120 or so miles of roads. The machine boasts a giant auger on a swinging arm, which takes repeated swipes through a ditch as the truck creeps forward. Dirt and debris are augered up into the truck, which is emptied several times a day.We’ve done up to a half-mile a day, Bidlencik said. That’s quite a ways when you’re talking about ditching.The department is also responsible for maintaining the growing number of detention ponds around the island. Such swales – often required as part of subdivisions – act as natural meters to the flow of stormwater, giving large volumes somewhere to collect so they don’t overwhelm ditches and pipes farther downstream.And in the Winslow area, underground storm drains must be regularly flushed and cleaned of debris.It’s a complex system, one that is perhaps most noticeable when, in times of heavy rain, it fails somewhere and standing water appears across a roadway.That’s when Hill or someone else heads into the field to evaluate the problem. There’s times when I run around putting out fires, days where I’ll get 20 calls, said Hill, who carries a rake in her truck in case a problem can be fixed with simple debris removal.The department has divided the island into 11 maintenance zones. Crews spend a full month in each zone every year – doing everything from road patching to sign replacement to ditching – with the remaining month allotted to overruns or emergency work.For accounting purposes, all time spent on stormwater projects is noted on workers’ time sheets. But department officials admit that absent a formal plan, the work has for years been largely reactive. So, now in the works is a comprehensive Surface Water Management Plan, under review within the department in draft form.The plan itemizes scores of runoff problems around the island, each of which will spin off into piles of projects, public works Director Randy Witt said.And with each new home that goes up, more impervious surfaces – read: roofs and driveways – are created. Less soil is available to soak up the island’s 30-40 inches of rain each year, and more runoff is sent on its journey downhill.Much of the work is the result of unfunded mandates – regulations handed down by state or federal agencies to protect water quality, fish habitat and the like.Disposal of storm-drain debris is also coming with a higher price tag. This spring, the city will break ground on a new decant facility next to the school bus barn on New Brooklyn Road.There, gunk pumped from the city’s storm drains will be run through filtering equipment; liquids will be pumped back into the city sewer system, with solids trucked off to the dump. Cost for that facility is projected at $275,000, with the source of the funds yet undetermined.Why a fee?The storm drain utility has historically been a lightning rod for the city, with some residents wondering what they get for their money if they don’t have an underground drainage system in their neighborhood.Proponents argue that because the money is collected as a utility fee, it’s dedicated strictly to drainage work, rather than disappearing into the city’s general fund.Everybody gets benefit from the work that’s being done, Eells said, and that’s everybody everybody.One ongoing problem is that the utility isn’t paying for itself. Stormwater work is expected to cost $800,000 this year, while the fee will bring in $391,000. The rest will be subsidized by property taxpayers.Among the fee’s more vociferous critics has been City Councilman Jim Llewellyn, who says it only made sense for Winslow, where the water goes into a manhole and goes wherever it goes.Any other utility on the island – water, sewer, power, cable – you pay some money and get a measured amount of service, Llewellyn said. It’s ludicrous to call this a utility – it has no correspondence between what you pay for and what you get.Acknowledging that the work needs to be done, Llewellyn maintains that drainage projects should be folded into the roads budget.I think it’s stupid to separate road maintenance from ditch maintenance, he said. Even Eells concedes that the whole drainage issue is a bottomless pit. Given a community our size, we could spend tens of millions of dollars fixing things.That’s underscored by the draft stormwater plan, which identifies enough projects to keep the department busy for years.But with recent jumps in the local property tax rate, the city is running out of taxing authority, giving more incentive for reliance on the fee.Another advantage to the utility fee is that there is relief for those on fixed incomes. Senior and disabled property owners who qualify for a reduction or deferral on property tax excess levies get a 50 percent break on the stormwater fee. It remains to be seen whether the fee hike will kick up a round of citizen complaints, as it did in the early 1990s. The city responded by shifting the billing process to the county.When we stopped sending out postcards and had it put on the property tax statement, the complaints virtually dried up, Eells said. I expect it’s out of sight, out of mind for most people. “