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MEMORANDUM <br />Date: March 1, 1993 <br />To: Mayor & Council <br />Copy: City Administrator <br />From: Steve Morelan <br />Subject: Revised Street Reconstruction Policy <br />As I stated at our recent workshop meeting, I have some ideas <br />regarding the revisions we're contemplating to our assessment <br />policy. I would like to highlight some of them in order to give <br />you time to analyze them before our next meeting. <br />I'm sure we all agree that improvements should be paid for by <br />those who benefit from them. In the area of street <br />reconstruction, it is difficult to precisely determine those <br />cost /benefit correlations. Ideally anyone who travels down the <br />improved street should pay their fair share of the cost (i.e. a <br />toll road). This of course, is not practical. The city has <br />taken the position in the past that those who live on the <br />improved street use it the most - hence our current 80/20 <br />assessment policy. This seems equitable in some cases, but <br />certainly not all. On a dead end (cul -de -sac) street for <br />instance, it could be argued that the only people that benefit by <br />having the street there are the property owners. But even in <br />those cases, there is pedestrian /bicycle traffic and commercial <br />traffic (delivery vans, door -to -door sales, etc.) using that <br />thoroughfare. In the case of thru streets it becomes even more <br />obvious. To use my street as an example, Bluwood Avenue is used <br />predominantly by the people who live on the street (and to take <br />the example even further, because I live at the end of the street <br />I use it more than the people living near the intersection of <br />Bluwood & Lakeshore). Lakeshore Avenue on the other hand, is <br />used not only by the people who live on the street, but also by <br />the residents of Bluwood, Australian, Old County Road C, etc. In <br />short, it becomes very difficult to assess the cost fairly to <br />each property owner. <br />I suggest that the overall fairest way to assess the cost of <br />street reconstructions then is to assess all property owners in <br />the city equally. For example, when Lake Street is reconstructed <br />I would pay a portion of the cost and when Bluwood is <br />reconstructed the Lake Street residents would pay a portion of <br />the cost. Obviously it is not practical to assess everyone in <br />the city at the time an improvement is made. It seems that the <br />only way to accomplish this would be to fund it through the city, <br />Page 15 <br />