Palmer may explore paving of heavily used local streets

PALMER - Paved streets - one sign that a town has "arrived." Paving shows that a town has grown past the one-street strip most towns spring up around.

The city of Palmer, while boasting many paved streets, has a few key blocks that remain unpaved. As anyone with a post office box in Palmer could verify, those streets are primarily between South Alaska Street and the post office, or South Cobb Street.

Tom Healy, Palmer's city manager, said the city generally only paves neighborhood streets at the request of the adjacent property owners. The city's policy, he explained, has been that property owners pay all or a majority of the cost of the street's paving.

In the case of the avenues of West Cedar, West Cottonwood, West Birch and West Blueberry, there are few property owners along the side streets - in some places only eight or 10 - and the divided cost among them would be quite substantial. In addition, Healy explained that casual observation has led him to believe the streets are primarily used by people accessing the post office - not by residents living on those streets.

For those reasons, Healy proposed in a memo to the Palmer City Council Tuesday that the council grant him leeway to investigate the cost of paving those four avenues, in addition to the cost of paving South Gulkana Street between East Dogwood Avenue and East Cottonwood Avenue, which would allow paved access to the expanded emergency room area of the Valley Hospital.

Healy, in his memo to the council, said since it was unlikely the property owners in the two areas would submit a petition requesting a special assessment district to pave the roads, it might be wiser for the city to consider instituting one instead. In a special assessment district, Healy explained, the city would pay a larger amount than normal to facilitate the paving of these streets, because they are beneficial to a large number of citizens.

He added, however, that property owners would still be expected to pay a portion of the paving cost.

The Palmer City Council unanimously approved Healy's request to further investigate the issue. Healy plans to bring back a report to the council and to affected property owners of the costs and possible funding alternatives available to see the project to fruition.