Adkins told council members the total cost to pave city streets is $161.9 million.
By the year 2020, Adkins hopes Middletown will have enough additional revenue that it can pay for $3.8 million a year in paving and other capital improvements.
Of that annual $3.8 million, he wants $3.59 million to go toward paving; $100,000 a year for capital improvements in parks; $100,000 to go for neighborhood infrastructure; with $25,000 going for tree care; and $20,000 going toward directional signs and general beautification.
He said a $3-per-month streetlight assessment for homes and businesses would generate roughly $800,000 per year for paving streets.
“Right now, we’re just paying Duke, writing a check for three quarters of a million dollars,” he told the council during a January retreat at Hueston Woods State Park. “If you recoup that from homeowners, obviously that money could be redirected to paving while we’re building the revenues up to 2020.”
Adkins clarified that businesses also would receive assessments. The expectation is that everyone with a water account would pay — whether their street has lights or not — so the cost “is spread out evenly to every account,” he said later.
“We’re one of the very few communities in southwest Ohio that don’t assess for their street lights,” Adkins said. “Most communities pass that cost on to their homeowners.”
“Do you want to bill homeowners?” he asked council members. “I have built that into my $3.8 million, the fact that we would. Obviously, you have to decide you want to do that. Cost estimates — and again, we would get much better numbers for you — would be theoretically $3 a month per household. That’s not a huge amount, but we’re tapping them for all kinds of other things.”
Council members voiced general support for the idea.
“I think that’s the right way to go,” said Councilman Steve Bohannon. “But we’ve got to show the citizens that in fact, we’re not just telling them we’re going to do it, but in fact, we are taking that money and going to put it into roads.”
Councilman Daniel Picard said, “I’ve always hesitated on this one, but I think I’ll go ahead and say we need to move forward.” But it’s important to carefully explain to the public the dollar reasons behind the assessment, Picard stressed.
“Doug, you showed us what the real costs are,” Picard added. “And we really need to hammer that home, that ‘OK, we have these costs for this, and these costs for that.’ You start adding this up, and we end up with, ‘This is the big number we’re left with, and that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.’”
“It’s a huge future liability,” Mayor Larry Mulligan Jr. added.
Councilman Talbott Moon, like Bohannon, said, “If we did do this, I feel fairly strongly that we need to have some sort of legal commitment to it going to roads.”
As the discussion ended, Moon told Adkins: “I need more information.”
This week, Moon said he still needs more information.
“If it’s something the current council is going to spend more time investigating, I would want to make sure that there’s a way to dedicate those funds for road or infrastructure improvements,” he said.
Vice Mayor Dora Bronston said she does not yet have a position.
“I really don’t have enough information to go on,” she said.
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