Wondering what happened to the Special Assessment District plans? Well, it was a challenging summer for the UDCA as well as for some of our committee. The foremost challenge we faced was the inaccessibility of our website. While “why” is not relevant to this article we lost our ability to post updates on this blog and our latest article was not included in the upcoming newsletter. Having access to this blog again is a great step forward. I am very grateful as well for the efforts of my committee and the progress we have made.
Over the summer we submitted an application to the City for the UDCA to be the Designated Neighborhood Improvement Organization (DNIO). We have since received approval of the quarter inch thick application and next we need certification from the Finance department that our neighborhood has the minimum Sixty percent threshold of parcels that are current on property taxes. If you’ve forgotten the DNIO is the organization tasked with managing the SAD and it’s funds.
In order to move forward with a vote we have to determine what services our SAD will deliver and to what extent. Snow, security and mosquito abatement are the only services allowed and the survey results indicate a desire for all three. We also have to have a completed annual budget before the City will issue us petitions for the vote process. Currently the committee is gathering estimates from snow and mosquito abatement providers. The University District Patrol President has supplied us with the required estimates for security patrol. Surprisingly, most of the snow contractors I’ve spoken to don’t do public streets.
Once petitions are issued by the Clerk we can begin collecting signatures and will continue until we have at least fifty one percent in favor or fifty one percent opposed. I anticipate starting this process just after the holidays or early February. We can continue as long as necessary to get enough votes either way. After signatures are collected the city Clerk verifies the petitions and everything goes back to the finance department for approval and then to city Council for approval and for public hearings. I wouldn’t expect this to happen in time enough for your 2017 property taxes. Ugh!
I expect to finish collecting estimates from contractors this or next week and then to finalize an annual budget. Pretty solid estimates by my committee indicate the assessment will be around two hundred dollars. Maybe expect a little more. I will talk about the budget process in a future article.
You can anticipate a public question and answer meeting to be announced for just after the December holidays. As well, we will continue to meet with our block clubs as the block captains request us to. As I write this I’m not even sure we will be able to post to our blog but if it all works out I anticipate writing about the survey results and the budget process in the next week or so.
By Thomas Bauer
Submitted November 27th,2016