Council approves assessments for North Broadway project

The Rochester City Council has signed off on revised special assessments related to the North Broadway reconstruction project.

The vote came Monday night following a months-long retooling of how the assessments would be doled out. The initial assessments, sent out to property owners last spring, had been met with fierce resistance.

This time around, however, the city used a formula that calculated the benefit — in terms of market value — each property owner could expect from the reconstruction project. That was different than the previous equation, which focused on how much land abutted the roadway.

The result of the updated formula was a total special assessment of $1.75 million, down from the original $3.1 million.

Still, while the backlash was not as strong this time around, several property owners did raise concerns about their assessments.

Samaritan Bethany nursing home, located just off of the Broadway corridor on Eighth Street Northwest, saw its assessment swell to $218,972 — a nearly eight-fold increase — based on the revised formula.

The organization’s land parcels were among the 21 out of 120 that had assessments increase once property values became the deciding factor.

“I hope you take into consideration as we move forward that I’m trying to take care of elderly people, and this is putting a huge burden on their rates that are already high,” said Susan Knutson, CEO of Samaritan Bethany, during a public hearing on Monday.

Samaritan Bethany is one of 15 property owners that have stated their intention to appeal the city’s assessments. (That is down from the approximately 70 who appealed the initial round of assessments.)

Dillon Dombrovski, a city engineer with Public Works, said the city has no intention of re-evaluating each assessment individually. However, each property owner does have the right to make their case in district court.

In the event an appeal does make its way into the courtroom, Dombrovski indicated he is confident that the data-driven formula will be defensible.

“We have now done our due diligence; we’ve got the benefit appraisal for this project,” said Dombrovski. “We feel we have done what is asked within the [state] statute.”

As part of Monday’s resolution, the council also authorized staff to begin seeking bids for the $19.2 million project, with the goal of beginning work sometime this year.

Sean Baker is a Rochester journalist and the founder of Med City Beat.