Agenda - Charter Commission - 04/18/1996

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PETITION FOR PROPOSED CHARTER AMENDMENT By: Ryan R. Schroeder CASE Background: ~ f~/, Enclosed is a copy of a petition for a Charter amendment recently received by the City. While the petition is self e2xplanatory, it i_~ ~pparently, a seco_nd attempt (the fa'st being the referendum election in September, 1995~0 stow fli'~-t~b-fii~Oh-Qf.~_R_~am~. This amendment, if passed, would relegate ~e City (or s~-me third party) to increased holding costs for any utility extension project which is Opposed within neighborhoods. It is. a commonly iheld belief that these two referenda petitions are a result of a petitioned-for utility extension for thelHaubrich Addition at County Road #5 and 151st Lane. In that project, owners of three properties ~etitioned for the project and three petitioned against. It would have taken petitions from owners of Four properties to stop the project under the Charter. The resulting assessments range from $19,707 to $36,977 for that project. The total assessment for the project is projected to be $156,826. The City has provided for 23 service stubs in the project which allows the existing six lots to ultimalely be subdivided into 23 urban lots with a per lot resulting assessment of $6,819 (assuming that th ese subdivisions do in fact occur). Currently within he Urban Service District (MUSA) there are 443 rural lots. If it is assumed that each of these lots can be subdivided into two and if it is further assumed that the resulting per lot costs would be ,imilar to that in the Haubrich Addition (.post development) there could be a potential in exce~s of $6,000,000 of project costs hnpacted by the petition in front of the City at this time. At pre~ent, this petition only impacts (apparently) properties within the MUSA. In the future, of course,[MUSA expansions would likely result in additional properties being impacted. On October 24, li995, Council deliberated over what to do in cases such as the Haubrich Addition (wherein public, improvement assessments will certainly appear excessive if subdivision of property does not occur). Proposed was a liberalization of existing utility system connection requirements in ~ases where private systems are relatively new. The agenda case and proposed policy is attache4 for your review. A primary concern at that time was that if3 pe m~rral of assessments was ut into lace~ who would be rele ated to the osition of rom e cost? · ............ ~ut mt_.~p__p_t_. . . g p prov-69'i~ng .for th1 . _.As noted above, it)%'Zoncem is bigger than just the Haubrich Addition in that it impacts an apparent '~-~443 households ~nd $6 million in costs. Taken in the extreme, if the other utility customers were ~orced to pick up {mat entire cost it would amount to roughly $4,000/residential customer - or - ff the City as a whole picked up the cost, it would amount t6i--6ti~Ii!~?_g-iT,150~per_Ramsey household. Other options, cfi course, would include not conducting future projects, mandating that the petitioners for th~ project pay for project revenue shortages, or limiting any deferral period to a date certain (thus limiting the ultimate exposure) and handling the interim holding costs in some fashion. Given the above issues, it is easy to see that What has been raised is not an easy matter to resolve to the satisfaction o~ all parties. It ~$ because of that, I believe, that Council was not able to agree upon a policy in October and why that occurrence led to this petition. Hopefully, the above provides an adequate historical note. In front of the Commission at this point, however, i~ the receipt of the petition documents. The Commission does not appear to have significant discre0on in how to handle these documents. Your charge is to receive them and place them back in fron~t of the Council in order for them to schedule an election on the petition request. However, there l~ave been concerns expressed that the process followed on the last petition was not the correct one. There likely will be citizen presentations on that issue at your meeting. There