Christina Anderson-Taghioff and her husband, Simon Taghioff, recently received a road work bill for $5,000.

The biller? The city of St. Paul, which milled off the top couple of inches of Victoria Street last year between Summit and St. Clair avenues and covered the road with the equivalent amount of bituminous pavement.

Anderson-Taghioff said she didn’t receive notice she’d be getting a bill, nor had she been advised how to contest the charges before the work was completed.

“It was a surprise to us, and it was a surprise to all of our neighbors,” she said.

RESIDENTS SURPRISED BY ROAD WORK BILLS

From Victoria Street in St. Paul’s Linwood neighborhood to Stryker Avenue on the West Side, residents have been caught off-guard by mill and overlay bills ranging from $1,200 to $8,000, payable in up to 10 years.

The St. Paul City Council held a public hearing on the proposed street assessments last week and approved bills related to mill and overlay projects on five 2018 road projects — Third Street and Western, Prior, Franklin and Wilson avenues.

On Wednesday, the council is expected to vote on finalizing the assessments for Victoria Street and three other areas — Stryker, Arlington and Forest.

“I think it was unfair to be assessed without knowing I could protest this,” said Christine Meyers, a resident of Forest Street.

Meyers and others questioned the quality of some of the work. After the mill and overlay project on Forest, a giant puddle formed in front of her and a neighbor’s property.

“It sits there for months, and it’s pretty bad,” Meyers said. “When I take my garbage container and my recycling bin, they’re in puddles, and when (haulers) have to pick it up they have to get in the water, too.”

CHURCH VS. CITY LAWSUIT

Why are residents suddenly receiving such large bills? The answer dates back nearly a decade.

Under St. Paul’s former “right-of-way maintenance” program, or ROW, all properties were charged an annual right-of-way assessment that covered mill and overlay work, seal-coating, street lighting, snow plowing, pothole patching and street sweeping, regardless of whether those services were actually performed on their street in any year.

The charges were even collected from tax-exempt properties such as schools, colleges and churches.

Beginning in 2011, a group of downtown St. Paul churches and nonprofits objected to the system through a series of lawsuits that eventually were bundled together before the Minnesota Supreme Court. In 2016, the court ruled against the city’s use of automatic annual fees to capture funding for citywide street work.

The justices wrote that the ROW charges were effectively being used as taxes, aimed at benefiting the public as a whole, and not fees issued in exchange for special benefits to property owners.

After the lawsuit, the city reconfigured the street-maintenance program.

The program now draws roughly two-thirds of its funding from the city’s general fund — which is heavily dependent on property taxes. About a third of the program is still funded by bills mailed annually to everyone for services such as street lighting and street sweeping.

A few street-maintenance services are billed when services are done to abutting property. Mill and overlay work, as well as seal-coating, falls into this third category.

In the past, “those mill and overlay bills were incorporated with everybody,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Public Works. “Now they’re paying for it when it’s done in front of their house.”

Now, under the revised street-maintenance system, property owners immediately bordering the street work are charged for half the cost of a mill and overlay project, ranging in 2018 anywhere from $17 to $56 per linear foot of street frontage.

Critics, however, point out that “arterial” streets aren’t used by only neighboring property owners — they’re also used by trucks, school buses, city vehicles and the public.

“The problem is, not all road maintenance connected to your property is about your property,” Anderson-Taghioff said, noting that her street is frequented by neighbors on nearby cross streets and general passers-by. “Victoria is a very heavily used street, and a very old street.”

Added Scott Kramer, who owns property on Stryker Avenue: “I don’t own this street. I don’t get to say how many buses go up and down it. … Every landlord is going to have to pass the cost onto their tenants. … Not to mention there’s cracks all over the new mill and overlay already, one year later.”

The Taghioffs have launched their own website to keep neighbors abreast of their efforts to fight the assessment at victoriastreetassessment.com.

NO PUBLIC HEARING UNTIL THE WORK IS DONE

To the chagrin of some property owners, public notification has also changed.

In 2017, the St. Paul City Council chose to do away with a public hearing process in advance of mill and overlay work.

Instead, hearings are held after the financial assessments are made public.

Hiebert said residents still receive advance notice that the work will be done in a postcard that directs them to look up estimated rates on the city website. It also lists a phone number for Public Works.

“So what happened, they decided they wanted to spend $2.3 million on mill and overlay projects (last year), and then they just did them,” Taghioff said. “Under the old system, they would have had to inform everyone, and talk about it. There would be some scrutiny. Now we’re seeing the aftermath.”

He noted that some residents just paid the bills.

“Nothing was stated in that first invoice that people had an opportunity to question whether the work was necessary, whether the work was shoddy, whether it was too much cost,” Taghioff said. “The people who paid right away, they never received notice there was a public hearing, just that if they didn’t pay they’d be charged interest.” Related Articles St. Paul City Council approves $600,000 charge for downtown improvement district

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The 2018 mill and overlay project along Victoria Street, from Summit Avenue to St. Clair Avenue, totaled $367,000 for roughly 4,100 feet of street frontage. At 50 percent of the cost, property owners are being assessed $44.37 per foot. The city covers the other 50 percent of costs.

“The city has programs where residents can spread the expense over 10 years,” Hiebert said, noting the bill can be added to property taxes over time with a small interest rate. “They don’t have to pay it all at the end of the year.”

City officials noted that in general, seal coating — a cheaper but more superficial treatment to maintain roads — occurs on residential streets once every eight years. The more intensive mill and overlay work occurs on higher-volume arterial streets every 10 years. Maps can be found at Stpaul.gov/sealcoat.