Following the City Council meeting, the Crookston Ways & Means Committee met to discuss six street assessments. The assessments included street reconstruction on Houston Avenue, from Hunter Street to South Ash Street, Alexander Street, from 4th Avenue North, Euclid Avenue from Guthrie Street to McKinley Boulevard, Guthrie Street from Euclid Avenue to 5th Avenue South and 5th Avenue South to the DAC bus garage approach, and an Alley off Elm Street between Summit Avenue and Central Avenue. The total preliminary cost of all the projects came to $2,061,263.
Finance Director Ryan Lindtwed and Public Works Director Brandon Carlson approached the board to share the funding for these road projects. They were currently holding about $670,000 in their reserves which they could use to fund the roads. “Currently, our reconstruction assessment was $40 off the front edge per foot, our two-inch overlay is $15 per foot, and our full overlay is $20 a foot. It was $675 last year to reconstruct a road per foot. It cost us $115 a foot to do a two-inch overlay and $245 a foot to do a full overlay,” Carlson explained. “We’re trying to find a way to close that gap, as only about 11% of street improvements were funded by assessments last year, so the resolution for the street improvements stated in 2019 that the policy would be looked at and adjusted if need be.”
Carlson had spoken to other communities, such as Grand Forks, about how much they used for street assessments and found that 30% was the most common, but much of the committee found that an increase from the current 11% was too much for the city.
“Right now, if we wanted to keep the 11% assessment for this year’s estimated cost on the projects, we’d have to up the foot assessment to $45 a foot to maintain that 11%. If we go up to 20%, it has to go up to $82 a foot, and if we go to 30%, it’s $123 a foot,” said Carlson. At a 30% assessment, with our other LGA funds, state aid funds, and funds from the water and sewer department, we would have to pull $300,000 from City reserves.”
Carlson stated he also chose a 30% assessment as if they improve State Aid roads, any reimbursement from the state goes into the 227-reserve fund, which was about $300,000 per year, which would get the project to sustain itself.
However, the committee favored the 20% assessment, with them putting a base on the water bill, which would increase the water bills of the homeowners on the road by $7 a month on the water bill. This would cause everyone to use the road in rental homes and homeowners to pay for the roads, increasing the value of their property. The committee then began discussing if the funding for the assessments continue to be done by a specific dollar amount per linear or front foot or if it should be changed to a percentage of the construction cost.
“What happens if you set a dollar amount is that the dollar amount doesn’t change. As time goes on with increased cost, the dollar is less absorbing of the cost, and the city has to pick up what it doesn’t cover. If you go to a percentage, that percentage covers any increases in costs of roadway construction as those costs go up in the future. We won’t have to come back every year,” City Administrator Charles “Corky” Reynolds explained. “There was that discussion, and even more deeply, was what amount should the city pay, and what amount should the landowner pay for a road that runs in front of or adjacent to their property? The council decided that we needed more information and asked us to prepare some potential scenarios.”
The committee asked Carlson to look at creating multiple scenarios from 20% to 40% paid by the homeowner or still at the current rate of 11% and how it would impact the tax levy at the end of the year and bring it in to discuss it at their next meeting on February 27.
