TIDBITS
Court Backs School Board on Stormwater Utility Fees
News Service of Florida
An appeals court Wednesday sided with the Miami-Dade County School Board in a dispute about whether it is required to pay stormwater utility fees to the city of Miami Beach . A three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that a circuit judge should have dismissed a lawsuit filed by the city seeking to require the school board to pay the fees , similar to other property owners . The ruling said the school board is protected by sovereign immunity . “ Although a stormwater utility fee is not a tax , but is instead a user fee that a party can avoid by declining to use the service that the fee funds , the district courts have uniformly held that state entities that use a municipal stormwater utility infrastructure to manage their stormwater runoff have sovereign immunity from being charged stormwater utility fees and such immunity has not been waived by … the current legislative expressions of the municipal authority to charge stormwater utility fees ,” said the eight-page ruling , written by Judge Thomas Logue and joined by Judges Fleur Lobree and Alexander Bokor . The school board owns 10 developed properties in the city that use Miami Beach ’ s stormwater-management system to drain runoff , according to the ruling .
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