The City Council declined to take action June 9 on a request by Linn County to transfer a portion of Alder Street and Old Holley Road to the city, one of two options necessary for the further development of the Canyon Creek subdivision.
Instead, the council will ask the county Board of Commissioners, when they meet on Thursday for their annual dinner, whether the county would be willing to improve the road before transferring it to the city.
The Canyon Creek subdivision, which currently has an entrance south of the intersection of 10th Avenue and Alder Street, includes a proposed access point using Elkhorn Street at Old Holley Road, south of the intersection with Eighth Avenue.
But the county will not approve the connection between Elkhorn and Old Holley unless the intersection at Eighth Avenue is improved along with improvements to Alder Street, which are located outside the city limits. Properties along the south side of Alder Street also are outside the city limits.
Canyon Creek and Elkhorn Street, which extends behind those Alder Street properties, are inside the city limits.
Still, the subdivision plan requires the connection be made, Community Development Director Carol Lewis said. The subdivision has 53 lots complete or under construction out of about 256.
Approximately 15 homes are occupied in the subdivision, Graybill said.
As it moves into later phases, perhaps years from now, Lewis said, fire officials will want to see a second access point.
As things are now, the county wants the developer to develop Eighth Avenue with sidewalks and 12-foot travel lanes and lower the intersection 3 or 4 feet to make it safer, city Senior Engineering Technician Joe Graybill said. The county also wants roadway, pedestrian and bike lane improvements on Alder Street, which is problematic because it only has a 36-foot right-of-way, meaning more right-of-way would need to be acquired.
“That’s the standard they’ve placed on the development to allow access to that,” City Manager Craig Martin said. In lieu of meeting those standards, the developer can leave the gate up or the city can take over responsibility for the road.
If the city took possession of the road, then the developer would not be required to make those improvements, Martin said.
The subdivision doesn’t have enough “nexus” to those improvements to force the developer to make them. “Nexus” refers to the required connection between requirements a government agency may impose on a developer and the development itself. If no nexus can be demonstrated by the agency, the requirements may not legal, according to court rulings.
If the city does take possession of the streets in question, it still raises issues.
Mayor Craig Fentiman said he is concerned about safety at the intersection of Elkhorn and Old Holley. Drivers come off the Old Holley hill swiftly.
Historically, it’s been a bad stretch of road, he said, suggesting that perhaps the intersection should remain closed.
Bringing the road into the city might mean city taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for fixing the roads, Councilor Jim Gourley said, adding that he is concerned that the Eighth and Old Holley is a dangerous intersection.
But that problem already exists, Lewis said in reference to the nexus between the development and off-site improvements, and it is not inside the development.
Police Chief Bob Burford noted that officers have responded to the area between Canyon Creek and Alder 42 times in the past year, even though it is county territory. Although it’s not a big deal for minor calls, already it raises issues about who is responsible for responding to serious or life-threatening calls; and city ordinances cannot be enforced on that island of properties not inside the city limits.
Bringing Alder Street into the city limits would further complicate the situation, Burford said.
“If we do this and we take ownership of Alder Street, we’ll be responsible for maintaining it,” he said. “To me, we’re exacerbating a problem we already have there. I would like to see us annex those properties in.”
If the properties are not annexed, city residents pay for maintaining the road and for police responses to problems in that area, while those property owners along Alder do not pay.
Another potential problem, Burford said, is reports of failing septic tanks among those properties.
Two or three of the parcels have failing septic tanks, Lewis said, and the city has had two or three conversations with property owners about annexing so they can connect to city sewer.
Property owners would have to pay a $1,400 fee to initiate annexation, and then they would need to cover the cost of connecting to the city’s sewer mains and potentially water mains, an overall cost of several thousand dollars.
At the same time, the county won’t let them replace septic systems, Martin said.
“The conundrum is you’ve got the county saying you’ve got to do this to do that,” Martin said. “And you’ve got a problem with your septic system we’re not going to let you do this. You’ve got to do theirs. It’s almost a catch-22 in terms of that, and the developer probably won’t be able to move forward with additional phases until that road can be opened.”
The council reached a consensus to open a conversation with the county commissioners about what to do with the roads this week.
Present at the meeting were councilors Gourley, Jim Bean, Greg Mahler, Eric Markell and Scott McKee Jr. Laure Fowler was absent.
In other business, the council:
– Declared a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria surplus along with miscellaneous computer parts, monitors, keyboards, printers and vehicle parts. The vehicle has 139,000 miles. It was used as a marked patrol vehicle and later as a transport and training vehicle. The city will auction the items on eBay.
– Held the third reading and approved an ordinance allowing Sweet Home Sanitation to raise its rates by 3.5 percent.
– Held the second reading of an ordinance removing the sunset clause from the ordinance permitting Texas Hold ‘Em Tournaments in commercial establishments, allowing the tournaments to continue. No one appeared at the council meeting to comment on the ordinance. The third and final reading will be during the next council meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m. on June 23. After that the council will vote whether to approve the ordinance.
– Held the first reading of an ordinance requiring separate recycling containers at multi-family dwellings with more than five units.
– Held the first reading of an ordinance amending the city’s fencing codes.