Item B: River Avenue Improvements

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were not assessed and whether there were portions of the project that could be altered to reduce the financial impact. Mr. Samer also heard concern regarding the cost. He noted that the bicycle paths were not impacting the assessments to property owners as they were funded by Systems Development Charges (SDCs). Continuing, Mr. Samer noted that some comments heard at the previous meeting had been on whether River A venue was a collector or not. He averred that it was a technical definition with traffic counts to back it up. Nonetheless, he maintained that there was a lot of room to bring the road to current standards in a creative manner. He added that bicyclists were used to coping with the vagaries in road development that sometimes resulted from this flexibility. Mr. Spain recalled that the preliminary costs document indicated that the anticipated cost per lineal foot of sidewalk was $5.30. He said one question property owners posed to the City Council was what the soft costs of the project were. He noted that of the total cost of $2.269 million, 23 percent was allocated to engineering costs. He asked why this percentage was so high. Mr. Spain remarked that planting numerous trees to make it "look like Alton Baker Park" was not the highest and best use of the area, nor was building a lot of sidewalks for pedestrian traffic that did not exist. In response to a question from Ms. Vaughn, Mr. Schoening explained that the Post Office frontage would be paid by the City. Ms. Cahill underscored that property owners were only assessed for improvements in front of their properties. Mr. Spain expressed concern that when ODOT undertook its improvements he could be assessed a second time for improvements. Ms. Cahill assured him that he would not have to pay twice. Mr. Spain surmised that the property owners would not attain much in savings by a reduction in trees and this sort of improvement. Ms. Cahill responded that lighting and street landscaping were not part of what was proposed to be assessed to property owners. Ms. Cahill elaborated, explaining that the component of the $99 per foot assessment for 10' of paving, curb and gutter would pay for the previous low bidder on the project and this would have included paying for their contract expenses and associated costs. She listed the other costs of the project, such as the purchase of right-of-way, paying utilities to relocate, the cost of forming a Local Improvement District (LID), the cost of inspections, surveying and design. She said those costs not specific to pavement were prorated across many categories of improvements along the bottom ofthe cost distribution spreadsheet. Mr. Henry stated that portions of the project that were not assessable included the median and bicycle lanes and were paid for with SDCs. He said the assessments paid for curbs, gutters, sidewalks, driveway improvements, and the portion of the street in front of the property to the center line. Mr. Hill observed that SDCs were an assessment. He said the group was paying for bicycle lanes, though not directly. He likened SDCs to a tax, noting that he had worked on 30 sub-divisions and had paid quite a lot into the SDC fund. Mr. Meeker noted that the SDC on his building had cost $30,629. He was dissatisfied that he would have MINUTES-River Avenue Stakeholder Group - Public Works Department August 30, 2005 Page 5