Beware: An LID can happen to you | GUEST OP

BY MARY CROSS
For the Kent Reporter

Local Improvement Districts (LIDs) are the city of Kent’s out-of-date and unfair method of funding road improvements. They use LIDs to provide some of the finances needed to pay for road improvements.

Beware – a LID can happen to anyone in Kent who owns property. The city of Kent can come out of the blue to penalize property owners for being just that – property owners. It seems that our property taxes are not enough to pay for the roads right outside and near our homes.

In the Kent Reporter on April 19 the headline read: “Kent property owners stop city’s planned fee to help pay for Southeast 256th Street project”. Many of us read the article with pleasure because for the third time since 2009 – a supermajority of property owners within the district protested – and this time divested the city’s LID 364.

In this case, “divested” means that the city’s plans to assess us were defeated by a protest vote of at least 60 percent of the assessment value. On May 6, at the Public Works Committee (PWC) meeting, Councilwoman Elizabeth Albertson said that she would like the city to form another LID and force us to go through collecting the signatures again because she thinks it is unfair that we divested LID 364. Unbelievable.

Albertson inferred in the Kent Reporter on April 19 that an out-of-state apartment owner was responsible for the defeat of the LID on SE 256th. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was an overwhelming protest against it by all the private property owners as well as the businesses and apartment owners. We were united in our protest against the city’s unfair assessment proposal.

In the same article it states that there are 107 single-family homes, 1,224 apartments, 82 condos, 17 duplexes and nine commercial parcels. Then in another paragraph, it reads that there are 370 properties financially impacted by the SE 256th Street LID. Both these statements are misleading in that the city’s proposed assessment list targeted only 225 properties for an assessment of more than $2.04 million. That’s an average of $9,108.36. For private properties, the range ran from a low of $1,100 to a high of $10,108; a median assessment of $5,224.

This low number of properties, 225 to be assessed for this stretch of road – is the primary problem with the city of Kent’s plan – too few would be asked to pay for a road improvement that benefits many thousands each day. But LIDs have always been a bad idea. And now with road construction costs having outpaced the rest of the economy – in part, due to the cost of petroleum products (used in paving materials), LIDs are an even worse idea for funding road improvements.

Busy street for all

Southeast 256th Street is not a residential street – it’s a main thoroughfare. And we believe that if the road is improved, the volume of traffic on it will only increase – along with the corresponding noise, dirt and pollution – and that the speed that people drive will only increase.

At the PWC meeting on April 1, Councilman Dennis Higgins, a member of this committee, asked Tim LaPorte, city public works director, about the last traffic survey done on this road. We learned that there hasn’t been a traffic survey done since before the interchange was built with Highway 18. It is ludicrous that the city would be prepared to design and build a road – and bill us for the privilege – and they haven’t done a traffic survey in that many years.

In the same PWC meeting, Albertson said “this is a social justice issue. Folks that are walking up and down on that road – who are living in those apartments – don’t have a voice, nor a vote in whether this street gets fixed except for by the seven of us (i.e., the Kent City Council).” She infers that we villainous property owners don’t care about our elderly and our children when we reject the LID.

Don’t be fooled, this is just a political maneuver to avoid the more important questions:

• Why isn’t the city more concerned about all the children living throughout the LID district – and those living here for the past 15-20 years? Certainly the road has needed work for that long and longer.

• Just how much commercial traffic is using the road – even in its current poor condition?

• What has the city done about asking all the commercial trucks to pay their fair share? There are many studies that show that the big trucks cause much of the damage that our roads incur.

• Why did no one from the City Council ever visit our community to hear our concerns? After all, Higgins and others emailed and met with the Kent Chamber of Commerce to discuss what rate their businesses would be willing to pay for the city’s B&O tax – so, why not us?

• Has the city considered ending the ShoWare Center arena subsidies – the millions of dollars of our taxpayer money being poured into the center to keep it afloat?

It seems that the city’s priorities are increasingly skewed to support business at the expense of the rest.

To ask 224 property owners to pay over $2.04 million to improve a road is unfair. Other sources must be found. And we’re not just talking about the LID of SE 256th Street – but for all the roads within the city.

After all, the city may launch an LID on any road – so beware.

Mary Cross, of Covington, is a property owner along Southeast 256th Street, and signed the protest against the LID.