Nicky Boyette – Wednesday afternoon, June 8, city council convened a workshop with members of the Planning Commission to discuss establishing an Improvement District for repairing the aging, vulnerable tunnel underneath a section of downtown.
Craig Hull of the Osage Group had presented council with his Hazard Mitigation Report earlier this year, and one of the hazards he spotlighted was the tunnel, a section of which collapsed as he was compiling his report. Hull had called the situation a maintenance problem not addressed for 130 years. He said the Improvement District would spread the costs fairly for repair and systematic long-term maintenance of the tunnel. Mayor Butch Berry said the last cost estimate he knew of for repair was $4 to $5 million.
Berry introduced Alan King of Improvement Districts, Inc., of Little Rock, who said his company has 250 clients with all sorts of districts – roads, bridges, street lights and beyond. He distributed a concise guide for setting up a district.
King said that to establish a reasonable cost for a project, you must first gather stakeholders and decide on district boundaries. In other words, who will benefit from the money spent by the district. Once boundaries are established and the project identified, a cost can be calculated.
Next would be presenting stakeholders with a petition stating goals, and two-thirds of the owners within the district must sign it. When the district is approved and results verified, a plan is presented to council, and council votes to approve, or not, forming an improvement district.
A board of five commissioners would guide the district, and King said it is common for one or two aldermen to sit on the commission. An assessor would evaluate the benefit/risk ratio situation relative to each stakeholder and determine what the fairest assessment would be based on the benefit they receive. This assessed tax would be paid with the annual property tax.
Hull said once the district has been established, the Federal Emergency Management Agency might partner with it on parts of the project. He commented a key element in establishing the district is resolving the problem of getting rights-of-way to do the work.
Commissioner Woody Acord of Planning said he was having a hard time understanding why those unfortunate enough to be near the problem must pay for it. He maintained the tunnel is a municipal problem, thus should be a city-wide obligation.
Hull said it would be “political suicide” to spread the district too wide. He remarked establishing the district will take important leadership, but put into place a solution. “Let’s eat this elephant first, then take on other projects.”
King told the group that state, county or city governments do not have to pay an improvement district tax unless they choose to. Planning Chair Steve Beacham said it would encourage property owners to participate if the city paid its share.
“I feel the city would participate because we’ve seen the deterioration beneath the Auditorium,” Berry responded.
The group discussed possible boundaries of the district, and speculation ran from the train station in the north to the Cat House or beyond to the south. Sentiment was for keeping things simple and manageable.
King advised the city to decide on the scope of the project, figure a budget, identify the stakeholders and get ready to go through the steps. There will be another workshop, time and date to be determined, to work out more details.