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Councilmember Cook inquired if the City should have a separate assessment pohcy for <br />commercial properties and why would they use the lot footprint for determining an assessment <br />rather than frontage. <br /> <br />Principal City Engineer Olson replied that they would be looking at the square footage of the lot. <br />He explained that the one thing he found out while working in other cities is that fi'ont footage <br />works out perfectly, but sometimes you have a property that is very narrow and they benefit the <br />same. <br /> <br />Councilmember Elvig stated that he was not sure why they would not apply the same rationale as <br />they did in the residential since they all benefit the same. With the amended policy the larger <br />business ends up paying a larger portion of the cost. <br /> <br />Mayor Gamec replied that the larger companies typically have a higher use of the roads because <br />of trucking. <br /> <br />Councilmember Cook stated that typically in a residential areas the amount of use is not <br />impacted by the size of the lot because typically there are two to four cars for each home, but the <br />larger the business the more they are going to use the road. <br /> <br />Councilmember Elvig inquired if there was a potential for setting precedent if they deviate from <br />the standard policy. <br /> <br />City Engineer Jankowski replied yes. <br /> <br />Councilmember Elvig stated that he could agree with not using frontage as the tool and can agree <br />with square footage and traffic, but once the use that process for assessing businesses they will <br />probably have to continue with it. <br /> <br />City Engineer Jankowski noted that in last years street maintenance program there was a large lot <br />within a neighborhood of certain size lots and the large lot only received one assessment. He <br />noted that the Council might want to discuss that issue and determine how they want to handle <br />those types of situations. <br /> <br />Principal City Engineer Olson inquired if there is a similar situation in the 2003 program. <br /> <br />City Engineer Jankowski replied yes. <br /> <br />Principal City Engineer Olson noted that the Council has discussed in the past identifying how <br />many similar lots would front the road and than assess the property owner of the larger lot for <br />each of those possible lots. <br /> <br />Councilmember Kurak requested that staff bring the issue back in February for further discussion <br />due to the lack of time. <br /> <br />Public Works Committee/January 21, 2003 <br /> Page 10 of 11 <br /> <br /> <br />