Stillwater may change how streets are funded

The Stillwater City Council began considering a proposal on Wednesday night that would shift more of the cost for street improvements from the city to property owners.

Currently, the city's assessment policy calls for a 50-50 division of project costs between the city and homeowners whose property abuts roads repaired or otherwise improved by the city.

But the City Council is considering changing the policy to a 70-30 split, with property owners paying for the majority of the improvement projects.

City Administrator Larry Hansen presented the proposal at the council's work session before its regular meeting. The change, Hansen said, "would be significant. There's no question about it."

For example, the assessment fee for a particular street improvement project in 2007 was $6,500 under the current policy. For that same project, the assessment fee for a homeowner would jump to $9,100 if the policy was changed to a 70-30 ratio.

The current policy has been around since 1993. In theory, the amended policy would allow the city to get to more of the improvement projects on their list, Hansen said.

For the last three or four years, the City Council has been asking him to increase the number of improvement projects done by the city by 10 percent a year in order to catch up, he said.

"The city roads are engineered to last 20 years at least," said Stillwater Mayor Ken Harycki. "We figure we have about 90 miles of roads. If you divide that by 20, that works out to about 4.5 miles a year. We [repair] about 1.5 miles a year. So we're trying to close that gap."

But the mayor said earlier this week that there are other ways besides changing the assessment policy to fund improvement projects.

Making such a drastic change, he said on Monday, would amount to "political suicide."

"How would you look at a citizen in the eye and say, 'We're going to 70-30?'" he said.

Hansen said his office has done an informal study of other metro area cities' assessment policies and discovered that they were all over the map. Some even assess property owners for 100 percent of the costs, he said.

Stillwater Council Member Wally Milbrandt said at Wednesday's meeting, "We know that basically we're not keeping up with our 80-some miles of streets."

Hansen, the city administrator, said Wednesday evening that council members have talked to him about amending the policy to a 75-25 ratio, but he said, "I think that's too high."

He urged the council to come to him with their questions in the next few weeks. "This is something I'd urge you not to go into lightly," he said.