Item B - Street Assessment Plcy - Laserfiche WebLink

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After adoption of the ordinance levying assessments, property owners have 10 days to pay the assessment in full or to finance the assessment through the City over a 10-year period. City financing is available to all property owners as long as the value of the property is greater than the amount of the assessment. Assessments financed through the City may be paid off early without any penalty. There are several financial assistance programs available to property owners. Both the City and the State have deferral programs that are based on age and income. In addition, the City has a subsidy program based on income with subsidies ranging from 1/3 to 5/6 of the total assessment. Local Improvement District Issues Beginning in 1999 and continuing over the course of several years, a Council Ad Hoc Committee on Street Improvement Funding reviewed the assessment policies for all functional street classifications. The goal of the subcommittee was to more equitably and fairly allocate the cost of street improvements to the benefiting properties. Based upon the work of the subcommittee, in October 2000 the City Council adopted an ordinance that substantially changed the assessment methods for arterial and collector streets. A year later in November 2001, the council adopted an ordinance that substantially changed the assessment method for local streets. The major changes addressed partially developed and vacant property, location of the primary access to a property, corner lots, and assessable width for different classifications of streets. In May 2004, the assessment method for alleys was changed to assess 100 percent of the costs associated with an alley improvement to the benefiting property owners. The changes to the assessment methods for arterial, collector and local streets met the goal of more equitably and fairly allocating the cost of street improvements to the benefiting properties. However, the changes resulted in a much more complex methodology and shifted costs from property owners to the City. While staff have worked through the complexity of the changes in managing specific projects, explaining the assessment methodology and how much an individual property may pay for an improvement project has proved problematic. For arterial and collector streets, transportation system development charges have been used to fund the City's share of assessment projects. For local streets there is not a viable funding source to fund the City's share of assessment projects. For arterial and collector streets the majority of assessment projects are initiated by the City Council with the adoption of the annual capital budget. Recently completed projects include Ayres Road, Delta Highway, Royal Avenue and Garden Way. Projects that have been initiated but where an LID has not yet been formed include the 3rd/4th Connector, River Avenue and Chad Drive. For local street projects, the City Council generally does not initiate assessment projects through either adoption of the annual capital budget or by council motion. The petition poll process is the method that the City has relied upon to initiate assessment projects on local streets. This process is time consuming and expensive because property owners want to know what the street improvement will look like and how much their assessment will be before signing a petition poll. It is rarely successful because it requires property owners bearing over 50 percent of the cost to sign the petition poll. In 2001, the Agenda Item Summary for the ordinance amending the Eugene Code for local streets included the following information: In the past 20 years, approximately 3.31 miles of substandard local streets have been improved to City standards, representing a street improvement rate of 0.17 miles per year. At this rate, it would take 280 years to bring all of the 48 miles of currently existing substandard local streets up to standards. L:\CMO\2005 Council Agendas\M050214\S050214B.doc