Kelly Kenoyer
Neighbors on Willow and Yucca streets are working to form a Local Improvement District with the goal of improving their water supply and road infrastructure.
The LID will allow residents to access the city’s credit and share the financial burden of the improvements, while paying them off over the course of 10 to 30 years.
The idea for the Willow Street LID first came up in 2018, when Josh Victor found out that 28 of his rental properties in the neighborhood were affected by pollution from the nearby mill property. Unsafe levels of arsenic affect some of the wells in the area, and many of them run dry in the summer, Victor said.
When those test results came back in the fall of 2018, Victor resolved to get an LID together to solve the problem and fix the roads while they were at it.
“The road situation is horrible,” Victor said. “I’ve had a window in the back of my truck break because the potholes are so bad.”
It took Victor a while to get the project off the ground, largely because of COVID, he said, but now most of his neighbors have signed a petition to get the city to create an LID. It calls for street, sidewalk, curb, gutter, and storm drain improvements, as well as putting the buildings onto city water.
Victor said the improvements will probably cost about $2 million, but it will be split between 58 properties over the course of a decade or more. That comes out to about $1,150 per year for each household, on average, over a 30-year period. The additional cost is put on the same bill as property taxes, but it’s more akin to a bond – and it’s based not on property value, but on plot size, frontage, and individual needs for infrastructure. The LID simply uses the property tax system to collect the finances that go to the loan.
The amount charged to each property is determined by the size of the lot, its ability to be split into multiple lots, or its amount of street frontage.
An LID also benefits neighbors by allowing them to access credit and capital through the city instead of acting as private citizens, said Community and Economic Development Director Blair Larsen.
“The city just acts as a middleman,” He said. “The city is taking out a loan to pay for the improvements, and then assessing the amount of that loan on the properties.”
That gives the neighbors an easier method of working together over a long period of time, using the backing of the city to get a bigger and better loan.
The improvement district essentially operates as a lien on the involved properties, although its payment schedule is dispersed over a long period of time.
Larsen said LIDs are a good solution when a neighborhood wants infrastructure improvements that the city can’t afford or can’t justify investing in, like improving roads that serve only a small number of households.
An LID essentially lets a group of neighbors access the city’s good credit to take out a long-term loan together, which is then used to make improvements to the entire area.
Victor said it took a little bit of explaining to get neighbors on board, but he was able to bring a lot of them into the fold.
“I know at least two or three houses down there that don’t even have wells, or even access to water,” he said. “They were definitely interested and then they helped talk neighbors into it.”
He said bringing others along for the LID “was basically just going around and talking to everybody and telling them how it will benefit us, it might cost a little bit of money but it’s gonna make the properties way more valuable.”
Larsen said an LID can be a great opportunity to improve a neighborhood, but he cautions that the process isn’t always a cakewalk.
“This will affect your home’s value because of the nicer infrastructure, but it will also affect your pocketbook,” he said, adding that it’s important to look at how the improvements pencil out for each neighbor, and whether the improved property value is worth the added bill.
It’s also important to figure out early on whether there are any neighbors opposed to the LID, he said.
“People who are proponents want it to succeed. So if they can exclude a naysayer early on, they probably will try to,” he said, adding that communicating calmly and clearly with your neighbors can help prevent a lot of heartache in public hearings later on.
As for the Willow Street LID, it’s currently in the process of going through City Council.
Victor is also hopeful that forming an LID might get the neighborhood access to grants through the city.
“We could lower the overall cost for each individual lot,” he said. “We have to have this process going before they actually secure those grants.”
In coming meetings, councilors will consider a resolution to create the LID, as well as the terms of the agreement.