VALLEY CITY, N.D. – The City of Valley City is proposing a Paving Improvement District (130) that affects property owners along 2nd Street N from 3rd Ave NW to 5th Ave NE and a couple of other connecting streets.
In total, approximately 10 blocks of Urban Streets will be fully and or partially reconstructed at a cost of $9,857,500 million or approximately $1 million per block.
Valley City Facts: Total Area of City is about 2,400 acres (approx. 4 square miles), 50 center line miles of streets and infrastructure. Population Density: 2.79 People/Acre. Home Density: 1.125 Homes/Acre. Center line of Streets: 50 Miles equaling 264,000 Feet. Avg. Street Frontage Per Home: 98 Feet. Every home (or home equivalent) is responsible for maintaining 98 feet of street. A typical city block in VC is 300’ x 300’ with an 80-foot street Right-of-Way with the above city block stats, the total number of city blocks is approximately 694 (264,000/380). If you were to reconstruct all of the city streets at this cost, it would take $694 million. That divided by 6,500 people equals $106,796 per person. An average home has 2.5 people in it, the total cost per home is in excess of $320,000. This is just for the horizontal improvements in the street and you would have to add the cost of the home to that. Another way to look at this is if each home averages 98 feet of street frontage, you can conclude the same amount, i.e. > $320k per home.
A group of Valley City landowners believe numbers like this are unreasonable and not many cities in the United States would have a chance of being sustainable. Several impacted property owners have expressed concern for the cost of the project combined with what the scope of the project is.
For example, the group says, why replace perfectly good sidewalk with new “pigmented” sidewalk. The property owners do not want to see money wasted. They don’t want to see things being replaced that have useful life remaining. They would like to see the minimum project completed, not the maximum project.
At this time, many residents are requesting that the city provide more time to address concerns and pinpoint critical design decisions. They are asking the city for more transparency in the process and do not feel as though one informational meeting is sufficient to accomplish that. The city property owners say they are looking for fiscal responsibility and transparency from the city of Valley City.
A protest form is available for signature for those concerned about the cost of this project at the RE/MAX Now office on Central Avenue in Valley City during regular business hours on Wednesday, January 15th.
One city official said the State of North Dakota is picking up the lion share of this nearly $10 million dollar project, or 90 percent. The city also believes special assessment won’t be any higher for property owners compared to other projects like this in the past. The attachments below about the project were provided to NewsDakota.com by the city of Valley City.
res-declaring-necessity-of-paving-improvement-district-no-130