Congressman Tim Walberg helped Hillsdale city officials acquire federal funding for Arch Avenue improvements. Courtesy | Twitter
The Hillsdale City Council unanimously approved plans to repair Arch Avenue using a special assessment district at its Dec. 1 meeting and will host a public hearing Jan. 5 to discuss funding for the project.
The estimated cost of the project is $448,000, according to Jason Blake, Hillsdale’s director of public services. Construction will include storm and drainage improvements over the 0.34-mile area from Mechanic Road to Carleton Road. The project came before the council in January of this year.
But the city will need far less funding than usual to cover the project. Hillsdale is set to receive $425,000 in federal funding secured through a congressional earmark by Congressman Tim Walberg to pay for the project, leaving roughly $23,000 to be paid through a SAD. A SAD designates dilapidated roads for repair and funds the work by taxing property owners in the specified district up to $5,000.
The city council will host a public hearing Jan. 5 to discuss funding for the project.“Due to waiting on approvals through a congressional earmark, engineering, and the scope of the project being changed, we were asked to bring forward updated estimates and drawings now,” Blake said
City Manager David Mackie and Assistant City Manager Sam Fry worked with Walberg, a Republican whose district includes Hillsdale, to get federal funding for the Arch Avenue project.
“This is not a grant like the small urban funds. This is a congressional appropriation. This is federal money that was earmarked for a specific project,” Fry said at the meeting. “We had to work with our congressman, Tim Walberg, to get an appropriation for this. There’s a very specific project scope that we had to submit to Congress in order to give the appropriation. We have to maintain the scope of that project with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in order to get the funds for this.”
The project’s cost will be split between federal funding and the owners of 16 parcels of land along the stretch of Arch Avenue, most of whom are industrial and commercial businesses.
Walberg requested the funding for Arch Avenue in a letter to Congress in 2024.
“Updates are needed to improve safety given that Arch Avenue is the preferred access point to the City of Hillsdale Manufacturing and Technology Park,” Walberg said in the letter.
SADs are a contentious topic for the Hillsdale City Council and were featured heavily in the 2025 mayoral race.
“The basic problem with SADs is that they’re irregular,” Ward 4 Councilman Joshua Paladino told The Collegian. “This leads to this problem, where the city’s policy — the council’s policy — is that everyone should be charged a uniform rate for a special assessment district. But it turns out that the districts that the state and the federal government target end up receiving a lower bill.”
In practice, this means that commercial and industrial areas often pay less in SADs than residential areas, according to Paladino.
The council tabled the discussion until January, when the council will host a public hearing. Before the hearing, Paladino said, the Public Services Committee plans to meet to discuss further solutions for the funding inequality.
Ultimately, Paladino said, the Arch Avenue parcels will likely be charged a lower amount than residential districts are for SADs.
“It’ll probably be about $1,000 apiece,” Paladino told The Collegian. “It could be as low as $500, maybe as high as $2,000, but somewhere in that range, based on the difference between the total projected cost for the project and the grand amount.”
Ward 2 Councilman Matthew Bentley expressed his continued frustration with the system of funding road repairs, a key issue in his mayoral campaign.
“This, again, brings up the absurdity of our special assessment policy,” Bentley said. “We need to, again, look into special assessments in totality.”
