Claremont : Assessment Plan Airing Set

The City Council will conduct a hearing March 6 on a controversial plan to assess property owners for street lighting and landscaping costs in order to raise $1.2 million to bolster the city budget.

Opponents of the plan say they have collected more than 7,200 petition signatures from people against the assessment. But council members say the city needs the additional revenue to continue municipal services at current levels.

The assessment would apply to all property in the city except that which is publicly owned. The amounts levied would vary, depending on the size of the lot and type of use.

Annual rates for homes would range from $92.92 to $148.67. Apartments and hotels would be assessed based on their number of units, and commercial and industrial properties based on their acreage. Colleges would be charged according to acreage, and churches would pay $185.84--twice the amount of a small, single-family house.

Assessments could be reduced if the council finds other ways to trim the city’s budget. The council has cut $535,900 from the budget since it began considering the assessment district, but it has not yet decided whether to use those savings to pare the proposed assessments or to reallocate the funds to long-deferred maintenance projects.

Under the proposed assessment district, the levy could not increase by more than 10% a year. The assessment district would cover 9,669 parcels on more than 6,000 acres.

The council will hold the hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, at the Seeley Mudd Auditorium in the School of Theology, 1325 N. College Ave.

If owners of more than half the acreage file protests, the City Council could still enact the assessment district, but only by a four-fifths vote.