Commissioners to eye street assessment proposal
By Steve Herring
Published in News on September 16, 2015 1:46 PM
Last year, Wayne County commissioners used special tax assessments to help residents turn the street lights back on in several subdivisions in the northern part of the county.
Now commissioners are turning their attention to subdivisions again -- this time looking at roads that the state Department of Transportation is refusing to accept into its maintenance program because of deterioration or failure to meet state road standards.
Over the past several months residents in those subdivisions have implored commissioners to help in making street improvements.
The residents have told commissioners that not only are the potholed streets dangerous, they are adversely affecting property values that in turn will cost the county tax dollars.
State law allows counties to create the special assessments paid by property owners to cover the cost of bringing the streets up to DOT standards. The ultimate goal of doing so is so that the state will add the roads to its maintenance system.
Property owners would be assessed for the work that would initially be paid for by the county. The assessment would show up on the property owner's annual property tax bill.
The cost could be spread out over up to 10 years.
Should the property owner not pay the assessment it would become a tax lien on the property.
County Manager George Wood explained the process to commissioners, who took no action.
Before the county becomes involved at least 75 percent of the property owners representing at least 75 percent of the property road frontage in a subdivision must petition commissioners to start the process.
"You need to develop a standard petition format which the county attorney will approve because we need to make sure these petitions are in complete conformity with this state statute and that they have everything the statute requires," Wood said. "Here is where it gets tricky," he said. "We won't know the cost of what it is going to take until we get with DOT.
"DOT does not have the resources, and you do not have the resources to go out and do the engineering on everything that is out there. So it is seems to me we are going to have to wait until somebody brings us a valid petition and says we want you to do this. At that point, the core issue is they won't know what the core cost is. We won't know."
The county can pay the DOT to do the engineering, design specs and bid out the project. The other option is for the DOT to provide a list of areas where work is needed and then the county would hire a civil engineer and contract the work out.
The county will have a "ballpark" idea of the cost once the engineer completes his work, Wood said.
At that point the county has invested some money because the county has either agreed to pay DOT for the engineering or the county hired an engineer, Wood said.
"My experience with special assessments is that people are going to give you a petition for it and when they see the price tag they are going to decide that they do not want to go forward," he said. "Others will want to go forward."
If the project moves ahead it is not an issue, Wood said.
But if it does not then the county has "eaten" those engineering costs.
"So we cannot do a lot of this unless we get a petition because otherwise it would cost you a tremendous amount of money," Wood said.
That is because there are a lot of subdivision roads in need of repair, Wood said. The county cannot take on the task of having engineering work done on all of those roads just to have it done, he said.
"It seems to me the issue is that the threshold before we begin anything is that we should receive the petition," he said. "Otherwise we will spend an awful lot of money, and we will not know if we will even get a petition."