ROAD ASSESSMENT POLICY AMENDED

Cape Girardeau will be picking up the cost of land acquisition for new residential street construction.

The City Council voted Monday night to amend a proposed policy that would have assessed landowners the cost of acquiring their property in figuring the cost of new street construction.

The action came after property owners along a planned extension of Hopper Road from Mount Auburn to Kage protested assessments would pose a financial burden.

Councilman Richard "Butch" Eggimann proposed the change. Eggimann said he and other voters assumed the city's Transportation Sales Tax would pick up most of the cost of the 20 Transportation Trust Fund projects, including the Hopper Road extension.

The new policy stipulates that the city assess property owners $25 per frontage foot for the cost of a 30-foot wide pavement with rock base.

The city will pay all other associated costs, including land acquisition, engineering, inspection and legal fees.

Under the original proposal, property owners would have been assessed $42 per frontage foot, plus the cost of land acquisition.

Eggimann said he wanted the policy to be the same as the assessments levied for the Lexington Avenue and Sprigg Street extensions.

John Oliver, a Cape Girardeau attorney representing one of the Hopper Road property owners, said the original proposal to make property owners repay the city for land acquisition violated the state and federal constitutions.

People have a right to be compensated for property, Oliver said.

"Gentlemen, there's something fundamentally flawed in the logic of this resolution," Oliver said.

Others pointed out that, in the case of the Hopper Road project, the entire community will benefit by having a new arterial street, but the property owners themselves will gain little benefit.

Diane Brown, whose mother Bernice Hunze faced a road assessment in excess of $175,000, said the property would not be fit for development after the road goes through.

Brown said her mother has been left "physically ill" from worrying about having to pay the assessment.

The original policy would have put the city in the position of "tripling or quadrupling the cost for these Hopper Road property owners compared to the Lexington property owners," Eggimann said.

The city is setting policies to give property owners guidelines as work on the Transportation Trust Fund project list gears up.

City Manager Michael Miller said city staff can't tell property owners what costs will be if they don't have concrete guidelines.

Without the policies, Miller said, the city could not have proceeded with acquiring land for completing the projects.