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“I always support a two-per-cent increase in everything we do in this city and I didn’t have enough time to discuss it with my community,” Darouze said.

Darouze said he understands there’s infrastructure that needs money, but he’s not convinced rural residents in particular should have to pay 13 per cent more or even five per cent more in 2018.

“This is a new tax and new fee we implemented last year and it’s impacting our community in a different way,” Darouze said.

“We went out to the public. We told our residents that we should pay our fair share and contribute to the infrastructure, and we sold it to them, we worked with them. They aren’t happy about it but we went out and educated them and talked to them constantly about it and right now for me to start increasing (the fee) five per cent in the next four years, I don’t think that’s fair.”

The stormwater fee is especially contentious in rural communities where properties aren’t connected to the municipal water and sewer systems. Until recently, those properties hadn’t been paying for stormwater infrastructure since those fees were plugged into water and sewer bills. Now those unconnected properties are paying a stormwater fee on their property tax bills.

The rural councillors received an earful last year as the city was implementing the stormwater fee. They were stunned earlier this month to see a plan to raise the fee each year by higher rates than the drinking water and sewer rates.