Agenda - Council - 01/26/2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council request, Staff met with residents to discuss the proposed improvements and to gather public input on three separate occasions. The primary focus of the feedback and questions received were related to the proposed street width and the need for both dedicated pedestrian facilities and on -street parking. The residents primary concerns were that widening the streets would result in increased vehicle speeds making the corridor less safe for pedestrians, and would result in the removal of mature trees along the corridor. There was also debate on the need for a dedicated pedestrian facility, as well as on the need for on -street parking and what other options might exist to accommodate pedestrians and on -street parking. In response to the resident's concerns, Staff ultimately modified the design to include on -street parking along approximately 35% of the project corridor to minimize impacts to existing mature trees. This amount of on -street parking should also not encourage speeding along the corridor, yet would provide some level of on -street parking, though it would require most people to walk a short distance to their point of destination. There was also much discussion on the basis used for developing proposed assessment amounts. As required by the City's Special Assessments Policy, which was discussed with the residents, the residential assessments for this project are based strictly on the costs required to reconstruct the streets at their existing width using a standard residential pavement section of 3'/2 inches of bituminous pavement over 4 inches of class 5 aggregate base. Assessments are not based on the wider street and more robust pavement design section as proposed to accommodate State Aid design standards. Since public utilities do not exist within these street corridors, and because the City has no plans to serve this area with public utilities, sanitary sewer and watermain improvements are not being proposed with this project. The engineer's opinion of probable costs for reconstructing both street segments to State Aid standards based on the proposed design is approximately $2,956,000. Estimated costs include 10% contingency costs, plus 23% indirect costs for administrative, engineering, finance and legal costs. A summary of the engineer's opinion of probable costs is included in Appendix B of the attached Feasibility Report. Comments were received by Council from numerous property owners at the January 11th City Council meeting. Council then directed staff to revise the Feasibility Report to add an alternate design exploring a 32 foot wide street section consisting of two through lanes, a parking lane on one side of the street, and no on -street bike lane, which is essentially the design that was proposed with the original project that was designed and bid in 2008/09 but was never constructed. The attached revised Feasibility Report explores the alternate 32 foot street design per Council direction, which has an estimated construction cost of $2,905,000. The engineer's opinion of probable costs for reconstructing both street segments applying only eligible assessment costs is $2,379,000 which again includes 10% contingency costs plus 23% indirect costs for administrative, engineering, finance and legal costs. A total of 65 assessable parcels have been identified. Staff recommends applying 25% of the eligible improvement costs equally across the 65 assessable properties using the "per lot" assessment method. This results in a proposed preliminary assessment rate of $9,150 per assessable parcel. Staff recommends ordering a special benefit consultation report for this project to verify that the proposed assessment amount will not exceed the benefit to the properties. If the report concludes that the benefit to the properties is less than the proposed preliminary assessment rate, Staff will then propose to lower the assessment rate accordingly during the Assessment Hearing, which is scheduled for October 11th, 2016. But if the report verifies that the assessment rate as proposed is justified, Staff will propose to adopt the final assessment roll using the rate as preliminarily proposed. This improvement project, which is listed in the City's current 5 -year Capital Improvement Plan, is proposed to be funded using a combination of special assessments to benefiting properties and street reconstruction bond proceeds. This project can best be constructed as a separate project, and is necessary, feasible, and cost-effective from an engineering standpoint and can be constructed as proposed herein. Notification: