Agenda - Council - 10/08/2019 - Laserfiche WebLink

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per benefiting property. This amount was included in the Assessment Hearing Notice published in the Anoka Union Herald, and was included in the Assessment Hearing Notices mailed to all benefiting property owners. Funding Sources Funding sources for this project include a combination of unexpended pavement management program funds, special assessments to benefiting properties, and stormwater utility funds. Unexpended pavement management program funds These funds include unspent 2013 budgeted pavement management project funds, plus 5-years of bond premiums and interest earnings. Special Assessments The City's Special Assessments Policy (attached) calls for special assessments to pay for up to 25% of eligible street reconstruction improvement costs. Special assessments are calculated using methods resulting in reasonable and equitable distribution of assessments that are uniform upon the same class of properties within the assessable area. The test for determining the validity of a special assessment is whether the improvement for which the assessment was levied has increased the market value of the property against which the assessment was levied in at least the amount of the assessment. Eight (8) benefiting properties receive special benefit from the improvements and are proposed to be assessed for eligible project costs. Eligible project costs include all costs except those related to subgrade corrections, widening or strengthening of pavement, and public utility improvements. The City is therefore funding 100% of project costs related to the subgrade corrections and expansion of the cul-de-sac per the alternate bid. The City of Ramsey's Special Assessments Policy identifies three optional methods for calculating assessments; Adjusted Front Footage, Area, and Per Lot. All recent residential street reconstruction projects used the Per Lot method to calculate assessments so Staff again applied the Per Lot method to calculate final assessments for this proj ect. Over the last four years, special benefit consultation reports have been prepared for each street reconstruction project, and the results of the reports were used to defend final assessment amounts. Special benefit consultation reports were not prepared this year since each report costs around $6,500 and this year's projects are similar enough to other projects that the results from those reports can be directly applied to this project. For this project, the Jarvis Street Reconstruction project report is most applicable, and the range of special benefits identified within that report fell between $7,500 and $8,500. On November 13, 2018, the City Council adopted a preliminary assessment amount of $3,919.90 per benefiting property. Based on final project costs, final assessments for benefiting parcels would exceed $6,600 using 25-percent of eligible project costs per the Special Assessments Policy. Over the last four years, final assessments have been relatively close to adopted preliminary assessments. Considering the significance of this year's project cost differential, the City Council directed Staff to calculate final assessments by increasing the adopted preliminary assessment amount of $3,919.90 per benefiting property by the percentage difference between final project costs and the engineer's estimate of project costs, which equals $5,116.90. This amount equals 12.64% of total project costs based on eight property assessments. It is important to note that State Statute 429.091 Subd. 3 states "An election shall be required for bonds if less than 20 percent of the cost of the improvement to the municipality is to be assessed against benefited property." Since the City did not specifically bond for this project and is instead paying for all unassessed costs with funds in its accounts from various sources, the 20% election requirement does not apply. The statutory election requirement concerns projects that are directly funded with bonds sold for those projects. Therefore, since no obligations were issued by the City for this project, the minimum 20% assessment requirement does not apply. The City Attorney has confirmed this is a non -issue. Recommendation: