Agenda - Council Work Session - 09/21/2010

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CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION Topic Report: Street Reconstruction Assessment Policy By: Tim Himmer, City Engineer -- ~i Background: The concept of developing an assessment policy for street reconstruction has been talked about numerous times over the past few years. The only existing City street assessment policy pertains specifically to the Street Maintenance Program (SMP); where overlays are assessed at a rate of fifty percent (50%) and sealcoats are being phased out from a fifty percent (50%) rate through the year 2014 (29% in 2010). The purpose of this case is to formulate specific survey questions, and a form of distribution, so that the residents of the City would have an opportunity to provide feedback on this important transportation funding issue: A majority of the discussion related to this matter to date has leaned towards the use of additional revenues, and to get away from one time assessments. Doing so would most likely require the levying of additional taxes, but it could also eliminate or greatly reduce the amount of projects that are counter-petitioned due to cost factors (assessments) to the residents. Advancement of this policy will establish a more concrete funding mechanism, and allow for more consistent resident interaction on future street improvement projects. At previous work sessions staff presented a cost analysis of what it would take to fund the reconstruction of City streets into the future, and included potential options for increased revenues. The Council thought this information should be shared with the public in a way that they would understand the dilemma the City is facing related to transportation funding and participate in a process to solve it. It was discussed that a survey should be advanced to gather resident feedback, but there was disagreement on how that survey should be conducted. Should it be done professionally via an outside agency, or could it be done via utility billing mailings, the website, etc.? What type of background information should be provided along with such a survey? What would the specific question(s) be to citizens of Ramsey? These are the questions staff is looking for direction on so we can continue to advance this important funding issue. In simple terms we have approximately 178 miles of roadway in the City. Taking out 36 miles of State Aid (MSA) roads that have their own funding source leaves 142 miles of local roads, but you may recall that we are also underfunding with regard to our planned MSA needs. If we were to reconstruct the local roadways every 40 years we would need $142M, or approximately $3.SM annually. If you include sealcoating every 7 years at a price of $25,000/mile and an overlay every 19 years (but only occurs once during the design life) at a price of $105,000/mile we would need another $500,000 and $400,000 respectively, for a total of approximately $4.4M of required funding each year for both maintenance and reconstruction. Currently the only revenue options we have to offset these costs are assessments and the general fund. Action Statement: Based upon discussion ~ Reviewed by: City Adminish Director ofPul CCWS: 9/21/2010