7. SR 07-25-1994 - Laserfiche WebLink

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. Honorable Mayor and City Council July 20,1994 Page Two water should be offset by a reduction in assessments. Council member Dietz has briefly discussed the potential of waiving the trunk sewer and water assessments to offset the loss of investment in the on-site systems. The difficulty with this issue is how to potentially waive this assessment for the developed lots but not necessarily waive it for the undeveloped lots which have not made an investment in on-site sewer and water systems. The other issue that has been heavly discussed is the street assessment, which raises the corner lot total cost quite substantially. The typical lot in Sandpiper Estates is approximately 300 feet deep, so when the equation of the short side plus one-third the long side or the long side, whichever is greater, is applied to these properties, the long side typically becomes the total length that is assessed for street purposes. The offsetting issue is that if the lots are subdivided, the corner lots with streets on two sides are the easiest ones for property owners to split. . The third issue that was discussed briefly at the neighborhood meeting was the thought of not allowing any further subdivision of the lots within Sandpiper Estates and, in turn, leaving the streets in a rural design with no storm sewer. The lack of storm sewer would reduce the assessments by $8.00 per front foot. By changing the streets from an urban section to a rural section would not typically reduce the assessment rate. Currently the City's assessment policy is $22.00 per front foot for the reconstruction of any residential street. We have made an estimate of the cost of rural roads and find that $22.00 per front foot would pay approximately 90% of the total cost of reconstruction in this nature versus 40-50% of the cost of an urban street section. The bigger issue with this proposal is how does the City prevent the future subdivision of lots. In a brief discussion with City Attorney Peter Beck, he felt that the only way to accomplish this would be to create a new zoning district and rezoning the area to one acre urban lots. This likely would be objected to by Mr. Bill Gagne, who is the owner of most of the undeveloped lots. It is likely that some of the existing homeowners who have planned for future subdivision by building their home on one side of their lot might also object. Another issue which has been discussed briefly would be the assessment of the project such that the first payment would not be due until 1996. This can certainly be accomplished; however, the Council should be aware that as the assessment repayment period is pushed out, the amount of capitalized interest which must be included in the project goes up. Given the unit type of assessments, any additional cost added to this project would be borne by the City. This would be the type of overhead cost that the City would attempt to cover with the $3,800 per acre trunk sewer and water assessment. Therefore, if the City Council were to consider waiving the trunk sewer and water assessments for the developed lots within Sandpiper Estates and also postpone the first payment on the assessment until 1996, the ability of the $3800 per acre assessment rate to cover all costs may become questionable. . 223-2013.jut