Palmer property owners protest paving assessments

PALMER -- Newly elected Palmer Mayor Jim Cooper found himself face to face with irate citizens on the same night he took control of the gavel at Tuesday's city council meeting.

Cooper and freshly elected council members Steve Carrington and Kathrine Vanover were sworn in Tuesday [OCT. 9] by Dan Contini, who was serving as acting city manager in the absence of Tom Healy.

Property owners from Highland subdivision showed up to comment on paving assessments in their neighborhood.

Streets in Highland and adjacent Golden Glenn subdivision, near Palmer High School, received blacktop this summer, but the project's price has some neighbors up in arms.

Seventy-one residents will repay the city a total of about $387,296, at 8-percent interest, for the project. Repayment periods will vary from three to 20 years, according to the amount levied.

"I will lose my home because of this, and I'm not going down without a blaze of fire around me." said Georgia Webb, who lives on Edinborough Drive. Webb told the council she lived on a fixed income-- about $900 a month in disability benefits, she said.

Cooper told Webb the purpose of the public hearing was to take comments on the assessment rolls for the project. Mistakes in the assessment could be investigated, Cooper said, but the project was approved by the residents during a petition process, and the council couldn't change the assessment formulas after the fact.

"It doesn't matter how you dress it up," Webb said, "there's a handful of us who are going to be put out of our home because of this debacle."

City attorney Jack Snodgrass referred to their predicament as a result of "tyranny of the majority."

In Palmer people can oblige their neighbors to share the cost of street improvements by collecting a simple majority of signatures from property owners in the neighborhood. The city provides an estimate of the costs in advance, so neighbors know how hard the new tax could hit them.

In Highland's case the vote was close, according to Palmer city finance director Allan Ossakow. Ossakow didn't have an exact figure, but said fewer than 55 percent of the property owners in the district signed the petition.

The assessment was calculated according to the street frontage each property had. That left Linda Hotchkiss miffed because her house sits on a corner lot. "Am I benefiting twice as much because I have a corner lot?" she asked.

Hotchkiss is being billed $8,683.77, according to city records. She and other property owners who declined to sign the petition told the council the assessment formula was unfair.

Hotchkiss' tax bill is higher than most, but the highest assessment for the improvements was more than $12,000. Hotchkiss asked the council if it could simply divide things evenly among the neighbors, which would put everyone in the neighborhood at about $5,45O. She also suggested a formula that billed people according to lot size.

Cooper told her the existing formula was written into code, and could not be changed. "I can tell you that the council will be looking at this in the near future," he said. No one told the council there was a mistake in their assessment calculations, but Cooper did say such mistakes could be remedied if pointed out to the city.