One of the broad goals the city has is that of getting all
its gravel roadways paved. Several
attempts have been made at a 5-year plan to accomplish this but these plans
have gone by the wayside as being too expensive or aggressive. The expense goes both ways. Property owners would bear the brunt of the
costs with assessments over a period of time.
The city would bear the brunt of costs for un-assessable costs, tax
forfeited lots (until sold), financing and assessment appeals.
Recently the city has taken strides to reduce its overall
debt and work again on paving and maintenance improvements. Maintenance activities have been started with
seal coating of some streets. Paving
activities were budgeted to allow for a small amount of project costs to be incurred
on an annual basis. The thought was to
use general funds and assessment income not pledged to debt to finance the
improvements, without incurring debt.
These projects would be assessed to benefiting property owners and the
payments on the assessments would be folded back into the budget for future improvement
projects.
Some projects, for various reasons aren’t assessed. Seal coating is one example of maintenance
that could be assessed but isn’t. An
overlay of an existing roadway is also something that could be assessed but sometimes
is not. Abutting frontages owned by the
city are not typically assessed if funds are available to do the project.
The short section of Thrane Drive from County Road 4 to the
driveway at the Pelican Lakes Conservation Club has abutting frontage on both
sides of the roadway owned by the city.
This roadway section is slightly over 200 feet long and fits into a
category of providing a public benefit as the PLCC is used by many in the
community for various activities/groups as well as their own sponsored
events.
With one of the proposed projects being shelved this year,
there was some room for alternate improvements in the budget. Thrane Drive had been brought up as a
suggestion for a public improvement.
With these things in mind the city council is considering this as an
additional project for 2015.
