The Stormwater is about to hit the fan

The City of Colorado Springs has announced they will start assessing liens on property owners who are behind on their Stormwater Enterprise Fee payments. If you're not familiar with the program, it means you are probably one of those who hasn't paid your quarterly fees or you don't live here. Basically, Stormwater Enterprise was established to collect quartely fees from homeowners and use that money to complete improvements and projects for our drainage systems. Your fee is calculated based on the total amount of impervious surfaces on your property to include driveways, rooftops, patios, sidewalks, etc. But don't panic - the average quarterly fee for a residential property is only $12.75. Unfortunately, this is a fee instead of a tax so you can't write off this cost at the end of the year on your taxes. I'm not going to go into detail, but click here for frequently asked questions about SWE.
Here's the real problem - some people aren't paying! More than some - there's nearly $2.45 million in unpaid fees at this point. So the city made it known today that they will start assessing liens to properties of deliquent homeowners. The city claims they are willing to work with you on a payment plan but don't let this go to collections or you're up a creek (pun intended).
Now for my two cents: seriously?!? If the average bill is $12.75 a quarter, that's about 0.14 cents a day folks! Do you really need a payment plan? $4.25 a month? That's not even a pack of cigarettes (now that the tax has gone up), a combo meal at Wendy's, or a dozen color copies at Kinko's. It's really not worth getting a lien on your property.