The Philomath City Council on Monday approved an ordinance setting the actual assessments to be charged against properties within the Landmark Drive Local Improvement District, closing out a project that brought the road up to city standards.
The ordinance passed on a 6-1 vote, with Councilor Teresa Nielson casting the lone no vote.
The vote followed a 25-minute public hearing. No one offered verbal testimony, though the city had received two written objections from property owners that were included in the meeting packet.
The ordinance finalizes assessments totaling $857,906 across 11 tax lots, slightly under the engineer’s original estimate of $859,000. Assessments are based on each lot’s total acreage, with individual charges ranging from $19,311 to $144,217.
The Landmark Drive improvements stemmed from a request by adjacent property owners to form a local improvement district and bring the private road up to city standards. The City Council approved the engineer’s report in June 2020 and passed a resolution declaring its intention to form the district.
City Manager Chris Workman told the council the project came in under budget despite one significant mid-process change. During the original hearing process prior to construction, the council agreed to remove a property owned by Shane McConnell from the district because it takes access off Highway 20. In exchange, McConnell agreed to a no-access easement along the eastbound property line preventing future access to Landmark Drive from that lot.
“We agreed as the council to go ahead and take him off the assessment,” Workman said. “So that meant the money that was being assessed on that property then had to get divvied out to everybody else that was still in the district.”
The removed property had carried an assessment of $29,785, which was redistributed among remaining properties based on total acreage. As a result, final assessments ran slightly higher than the original engineer’s estimates for those owners, though Workman called the increases “not overly substantial.”
Workman credited city staff with helping hold down project costs. Public works crews planted the street trees and handled some of the landscaping work in-house rather than contracting it out, he said. Design choices also factored in.
“We used the industrial standard for sidewalks and only put a sidewalk on one side of the street instead of both sides of the street recognizing it’s an industrial street and it’s going to have more limited pedestrian use than what a typical city street would have,” Workman said. “So that reduced quite a bit of the cost as well.”
Workman said staff’s recommendation remained to include all properties as proposed in the engineer’s estimate despite the submitted objections that had been received.
Before the vote, Mayor Christopher McMorran acknowledged his mixed feelings about local improvement districts generally but said the decision before the council was a narrow one.
“This LID was already approved and the money was already spent and we are just kind of reiterating what the council already decided,” McMorran said. “I absolutely understand the concerns of the property owners opposed. I would probably share some of those concerns. But in my mind, I just feel like this decision was already made years ago and I think it would be inappropriate to vacate that entire decision without some really compelling new evidence.”
The mayor said the council was “not making a decision about whether or not we want to do an LID tonight” but rather reviewing updated estimates against what was previously approved.
Under terms set by the city’s Finance and Administration Committee, property owners will have 10 years to pay their assessments at 5% interest. The assessments will be recorded as liens against the properties unless paid in full within an initial window.
After discussion, the council unanimously amended the ordinance to give property owners 60 days — rather than the standard 30 — to make payment before interest begins accruing. Property owners still have 30 days to enter into a payment agreement with the city. Workman said property owners can make annual, quarterly or monthly payments during the 10-year period.
Following passage, the city recorder will mail notice of assessment to each property owner by registered or certified mail and publish notice in a newspaper of general circulation, as required under city code.
