res_7486 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

now or whether I pay for it 15 years down the road. My taxes have gone up $300 in the past two years. When this improvement goes in, my property value goes up, my taxes go up, assessments go up - am I supposed to be held responsible for this when it was misrepresented in the first place? That's the point that I want to get across tonight. MR. HONCHELL: I can respond to a portion of that. I'm not trying to defend it, I'm just trying to let the public at least know what happens when someone comes in for a petition. The City doesn't generate them. Someone comes to our counter and says we'd like to have a street done - we give them a petition. We give them a pamphlet that we hope explains a great deal of the process. We also indicate to the petitioner what the prevailing assessment rates have been running. Obviously, without doing a study, we canlt tell you that your assessment is going to be $11.22 a foot. That's impossible without doing a study. This time, for instance, we indicated it would be approximately $1,000 - that would be a good ball- park for someone to think about. It's been our experience that very few people would vote yes if it cost $950.00, where they would have voted no if it cost $1,000. Similarly, very few people change their mind if it's $1,050 instead of $1,000 the other way. Most of the people seem to be able to conclude that they either like it in that kind of a price range or they don't like it. You are correct - there are no specific dollar amounts involved. That's what the study is for - to find the specific dollar amount. ACTING MAYOR JOHNSON: We don't get to that until we hear from (inaudible). MR. CRUMPLER: I think for it to be a valid petition that some dollar value should be on the,re, even an estimate, so that the people can figure out on their own how much it's going to cost them. It's not too hard to figure out - with 32 houses, $140,000 - how much it's going to cost you. But you have a lot of variables in there so it doesn't cost you that much, yet the people don't know that. So when they vote no, they may want to vote yes if they knew to begin with. Then again, they may vote yes and want to say no. ACTING MAYOR JOHNSON: They do have a rough approximation when they make that decision. Based on the procedure that the City follows, they do have a rough approximation. It's not in detail, but it's fairly close. COUNCILMfu~ FRANKE: I want to point out - you people come to us for your streets. I don't know who you are or where you are, but somebody came and got a petition, had it signed, brought it in. At that time you had a little thing that goes with it that people can look at (inaudible). We don't know ourselves what it's going to cost until our engineering -5-