Not long after buying a house at the corner of Osceola Avenue and Victoria Street in St. Paul in October 2017, Simon Taghioff was taken aback by a $5,000 bill from the city for mill and overlay work. He and his wife, Christina Anderson Taghioff, started asking questions.
"'We're new here. Is this normal?' " Simon Taghioff said.
It wasn't. Especially after the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2016 threw out St. Paul's previous system of paying for street maintenance with a right-of-way fee charged to all properties. Changing its system to charge property owners 50% of mill and overlay cost also didn't pass muster. A Ramsey County judge in May tossed the city's street assessment program, leaving a $15 million hole in St. Paul's budget.
So, what did Taghioff, a London native, do after derailing the city's system of paying for street paving? Get involved in city planning, of course. Taghioff now sits on the St. Paul Planning Commission and the Summit Hill Association, reviewing land use and zoning issues.
Eye On St. Paul sat down with the founder of Fair Streets St. Paul to chat about what sparked his involvement in city issues. This interview was edited for length.
Q: Soon after moving in, you got a pretty big bill from the city and started going to City Council meetings. Tell us about that.
A: So, the way this works is you get the invoice at the end of the year, and you're given the option to pay it. Or you have it added to your property taxes, with interest. For that to happen, the City Council needs to ratify it. Those meetings were in April and May 2019. At the very first council meeting, there must have been well over 50 people telling the City Council, "This isn't fair."
Q: You asked why homeowners on arterial streets were paying half the costs when those streets were heavily used.