Barry Street residents sign petition to oppose SAD. Christina Lewis | Collegian
Residents filed letters objecting to city plans
The Hillsdale City Council delayed a decision on the Barry Street road repair project at its meeting Monday after proposed repairs met opposition from most residents on the street.
Barry Street was originally scheduled for repair this coming summer. But, after a majority of the street’s residents rejected the plan, the council met March 3 to hold a public hearing and discuss the Special Assessment District for Barry Street. The SAD for Monroe Street was approved in a 6-2 vote.
Establishment of the SAD would require the homeowners to pay up to $5,000 for repairs to the dilapidated road. One Barry Street homeowner, Timothy Polelle ’19, gathered signatures from a majority of his neighbors, but the city council rejected his petition at the Feb. 17 meeting because residents have to submit their own letters, according to city officials.
At this week’s city council meeting, 16 Barry Street residents — a majority — submitted letters asking to opt out of the proposal. The council would need to vote 7-1 to override these objections.
In a 6-2 vote, the council voted to push discussion to its April 7 meeting, with Councilman Robert Socha and Councilman Will Morrisey in the minority. During the council’s deliberation, Acting Mayor Joshua Paladino suggested using extra funding from the Capital Improvement Fund, the new endowment from Hillsdale College, and the new special assessment policy to offset the costs homeowners would have to pay.
“My preference is that we do this project, and I would like to spend some money to do it,” Paladino said in the meeting. “We are getting $100,000 from the college, we have the capital outlay fund, and are saving money by increasing Dial-A-Ride and airport hangar rates. I say we negotiate a number, say $100,000 to start, apply that equally to all residential properties, and that could give everyone $3,000 off this assessment.”
Paladino said this relief would apply to all three districts with roads in need of repair: Monroe, Arch, and Barry.
“This is what the general fund surplus should be for, the citizens’ primary concern: infrastructure,” Paladino said. “These are all streets that are being used for general purposes, so we should be willing to spend a little bit of money.”
City Manager David Mackie said approving Paladino’s suggestion would show bias to certain districts and not others.
“Using this policy to treat other areas differently is disingenuous, you are taking money out of the general fund to prop up a certain district as opposed to all the other districts we have done,” Mackie said. “This is what the government is for, to treat everyone the same. I feel like where we are going with this is inappropriate for the rest of the districts.”
In response to Mackie, Councilman Jacob Bruns said the council should determine what is appropriate.
“It is not the city manager’s job to determine what is appropriate, that is the council’s job,” Bruns said. “The inappropriate thing is offering your political opinion to the political body.”
Councilman Robert Socha said Paladino’s idea should have been brought up earlier.
“I don’t appreciate you bringing this up at the moment we are voting on this. It is ad hoc and was sprung on us as a surprise,” Socha said. “If we are going to do something like this then we should have set that as policy before we come into this situation and to spring it on me like this is insulting.”
According to Paladino, the new special assessment policy passed would accrue potential earnings of around $120,000. Paladino said the $100,000 distributed to residential properties would still leave the council $20,000 in the green.
“I am happy to set it as a policy where next year we spend $100,000 and give it equally to all the 401 residential properties in that district,” Paladino said. “We have to address the circumstances at hand; if our residents don’t want something but we have the money to contribute to a project right now, then why not spend the money?”
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