Agenda Packets - 2003/07/07 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

The City Council would set an interest rate each year to be applied to the special assessments. The certification fee and interest rate would be set to recover the City’s cost for the process. The special assessment certification would happen at least once per year, timed to coincide with Ramsey County’s deadlines. It could happen more than once. The advantage of doing the process twice per year is that once the City Council holds the public hearing and certifies the assessment, it is then a lien against the property. A certified assessment can’t be negated by bankruptcy of the owner or sale of the property. I recommend that the City keep the option of shutting off water service as a back up procedure for the very few cases in which special assessments aren’t allowed. By coincidence, we are about to start a shut off process. If the City Council wishes to make a policy change, we can forgo the shut off and develop a special assessment process instead. State law and Ramsey County procedures already define the process to a great extent. A draft policy is attached for review by the City Council. This is an early draft and needs fine tuning in a number of areas. This is particularly true of number of days between various steps in the process. It could be possible to complete work on the policy fairly quickly and allow certification of a special assessment role for this fall’s deadlines. The draft policy contains several significant points that merit special attention as follows: 1 Special assessments become the primary means of collection of delinquent accounts. Water service shut offs become a back up procedure. 2 Residential rental properties shall be billed to the owner, not the tenant. 3 New owners of residential properties will not be billed for unpaid amounts owed by previous owners. Such a billing is allowed by state law, but is an undesirable first contact between the City and a new owner. Respectfully Submitted, Charles Hansen