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I also have been presented with a letter which was pre- sented to me to read to you this evening. It's a very short letter. It's dated April 11. The undersigned are opposed to the improvement for Galtier Street, to include curbs, gutters and bituminous roadway. We will not be able to attend the meeting tonight. This is Bob Solberg and Robert A. Solberg and these folks are deaf mutes and have asked that their position be made known by means of this note. May I give it to you Madame Mayor? MAYOR DEMOS: Surely. JOANNE SWANSON: I think you all for your kind attention. MR. GEORGE REIS, 2850 Galtier: I couldn't afford an attorney so, Mrs. Mayor, I'll have to speak for myself and some of our neighbors. As to the feasibility of doing the street because it might be torn up - I have lived there for approxi- mately 24 years, during which time we had them torn up for water, we had them torn up for sewers, and we had them torn up for storm sewer. We survived each time they dug our street up in front of our house - it was lowered a few inches and now we have to go - I would estimate - about a foot off the pave- ment in order to get into our driveway. The reason our drive- way is built at that size is because when I replaced it some years ago the City office sent out an engineer to tell me where the forms had to be built. I said now that's pretty high and he said yes, but the streets are going to be paved and that's where the pavement will be. Now, five years later or thereabouts, I'm still climbing a considerable hill. I've been able to do it, although my car scrapes once in a while when I come in. Now I'm having more trouble because, in order to get me up into my yard, they built quite an incline - the blacktop curb was put out into the street and now it has been ripped out by the snowplow and I don't have it. As far as the cost is concerned - we are ready to pay our assessment. I understand that the property owner will pay 1/4 of it and that general taxation will pay 3/4 of it. From our good Mayor I have understood - just recently from the (~1audible) - that our business community pays about half of our costs of our streets. At the time this project was approved in the first place, my wife and I were not here. We heard about it when we came home. We understood that a total of ten projects were approved at that time so that - as our Mayor has told us - we can gradually improve all the streets in our City so that we won't have them all come due at one time. We approve of that. We agree with that. The question of whether we pay all of it or 3/4 of it or 1/4 - we know that the other nine projects in this main thing that was approved some time ago will be put in and we know that, along with the other taxpayers in the country and in the City, we are going to pay for 3/4 of their costs and they will get the improvements. AS far as curbs being unsightly - this I do not understand. I think they're beautiful and I will be -7-