Ciry Repaving Road in Neighborhood

AKBill

AKBill

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AKBill
Well the city is repaving the road in our neighborhood. Got a letter stating my share is $4000. 2 ways to pay. Pay the bill outright, $4000, or pay over a 10 year period. The 10 year payment is $400 a year at 4.35%.

Is this normal or just something Juneau is doing because our neighborhood is very secluded and no real commercial traffic? Our road is not a high traffic area used by the general public, pretty much just the neighbors.

Thanks for your comments
 
Around here it's called 'special assessments' and you just calculate it into the price of a home. If you buy a home it may be '325k + 20k in specials'. The interest on the specials is limited by statute so most just decide to pay them off over whatever time the city gives you (whenever you get to zero, the city will find a new project to collect specials on, re-paving the perfectly fine road, replacing the streetlights with new LED ones etc. your specials will never go to zero ;-) ). The other option is to have the seller pay them off and roll them into the purchase price, that way you pay everything in one bill with your mortgage rather than your property tax bill (minor tax benefit). The downside of that is that you can't reverse it, so when you sell, you are trying to sell the 345k house in the 325k neighborhood.

Specials for something like paving or fixing drainage suck if you live in a sparse out of the way neighborhood and there are only a few homeowners to share the joy. But then, small government me likes them because people pay for the common facilities like streets based on their individual needs, not out of general taxation. If you live on little 1/5th acre city lots, your specials for repaving your road are going to be lower than if you are spread out on 3 acre parcels in a exurban subdivision.

I have one place where I need to maintain a 1300ft gravel road together with 2 other lot owners. I wish I could just call the city and have them fix the washouts after the monsoon comes through. There are benefits to local government maintaining things like roads, unless you don't mind doing the work yourself.
 
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How is this legal? Don't we pay a crazy amount in taxes as it is, but they need to come after you for $4,000? I thought that was the whole point of the tax on gas was to pay for roads..??

The government is a joke

That's like Delta asking you for more money midway through your flight
 
My neighborhood has private roads, we have our own road district and it comes as a line item on the property taxes.
 
I would much rather pay to have a privately funded road that to be beholden to a Government bureaucracy...
 
I seem to recall that there is no personal income tax or sales tax in Alaska and that they have one of the lowest gas taxes. Maybe this is their normal way to pay for projects that only serve a small part of a small population.
 
Brings back bad memories. 30 years ago, one week before my wedding, the city came along unannounced and "prepped" the perfectly good road in front of my house for re-paving. Used some sort of machine to grind up the top layer of asphalt along the whole block. Then they came along and poured oil all over the rough surface. And then nothing. Like everybody disappeared into a black hole.

We planned a get together for all the out of town guests the day after the wedding at my place. My guests had to step through the oil in their dress shoes to get to my sidewalk. I was furious, but I discovered that age old lesson: you can't fight City Hall.
 
Tantalum said:
How is this legal? Don't we pay a crazy amount in taxes as it is, but they need to come after you for $4,000? I thought that was the whole point of the tax on gas was to pay for roads..??

The government is a joke
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The OP is in Alaska. What they pay in local taxes and gas taxes might vary from what you pay where you are.
 
They do the same thing in our town, charge landowners whose land abuts the improvement/maintenance. Like others have said, shouldn't be legal since you're already paying taxes for that.
 
I kinda wish we had an option like that. We pay insane property taxes in our county, as well as the motor fuel taxes everybody else has to pay. This is the 21st Century, and we continue to deal with a wide selection of 19th Century sand and rock roads. The county road commissioners around here have never learned to how to build a proper road. They grade the rock roads in such a manner as to cause the water to drain to the center of the road rather than to the missing road ditches. We have a few ok paved roads, but the majority of the paved roads are "patch" roads. The joke of the neighborhood is about the man with the shovel driving around in his little dump truck paving the roads by hand. It really is sad, but hilarious too. Some of the roads are literally paved with cold patch material. The brainwashed voters continue to vote the party, not the man, and the county road commissioners keep their "do nothing" tax payer funded jobs. It probably sounds like I'm a complainer. I'm not. I'm only telling the truth. Stop complaining. You got it good with an option like that.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
The OP is in Alaska. What they pay in local taxes and gas taxes might vary from what you pay where you are.
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I know Alaskans get some healthy benefits when it comes to taxes.. but ultimately they are still paying into a central "community pot" - no? This is the same pot that presumably feeds the police and fire.. and buys salt and sand for the roads, etc. In addition, the Feds have more than enough money that they use on completely asinine things. Going after the lowest rung of the ladder, IE, the individual tax paying home owners, seems insane

What we let our government get away with on income, personal property, and wealth theft is bonkers. But I'll stop there. If the city they told me they needed $4,000 to repave a portion of the road I'd tell them to leave my portion of it unpaved
 
I grew up in a town of 2K people in Texas. Our road was unpaved and had no curbs or sidewalks. Occasionally, the City would come take a vote. If the majority of the people on the street wanted it paved or wanted curbs and sidewalks, we would have to pay a portion of that. The average house price was less than $10K, so even to this day there is no pavements.
 
LoneAspen said:
I could easily see them doing that. The "Midpoint Continuation Fee" - everybody get their credit cards out!
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Oh man, should I delete the post? Do airline execs ever read PoA? That's the last thing we need know... ultra low cost pay-as-you-go carrier, ha!
 
Tantalum said:
Oh man, should I delete the post? Do airline execs ever read PoA? That's the last thing we need know... ultra low cost pay-as-you-go carrier, ha!
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Please insert twenty-five cents for the next five minutes of cabin pressurization.
 
They broke a water main yesterday. Wonder how much that's going to cost..
 
Juliet Hotel said:
The OP is in Alaska. What they pay in local taxes and gas taxes might vary from what you pay where you are.
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Exactly. No state income or sales tax. There are however local sales taxes. Gas tax, which pays for roads is only 14 cents/gallon in Alaska compared to Californina and Pennsylvania where it is over 50 cents/gallon. The State of Alaska is broke, so very little money to hand out for road building and such. Governor wants to end the Alaska Marine highway system and park or sell all the ferry boats that make up the system. That won't happen, but big cuts in the system are coming. But people still want that dividend check. Even though it's a red state, there is a real sense of entitlement here. A tax increase of some sort needs to happen here, but the politicos are more afraid for their jobs than doing the job that needs to be done.

Zeldman said:
Looks like the city has found a way to get your dividend checks so they can get ''their'' money back.
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And that dividend may well be cut in half this year so the State still has a little bit left. Last I read was that the politicos have yet to decide on the size of the dividend. The State needs to do away with that system or institute an income tax to get much of it back. Sad, but true.
 
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Htaylor said:
Exactly. No state income or sales tax. There are however local sales taxes. Gas tax, which pays for roads is only 14 cents/gallon in Alaska compared to Californina and Pennsylvania where it is over 50 cents/gallon. The State of Alaska is broke, so very little money to hand out for road building and such. Governor wants to end the Alaska Marine highway system and park or sell all the ferry boats that make up the system. That won't happen, but big cuts in the system are coming. But people still want that dividend check. Even though it's a red state, there is a real sense of entitlement here. A tax increase of some sort needs to happen here, but the politicos are more afraid for their jobs than doing the job that needs to be done.



And that dividend may well be cut in half this year so the State still has a little bit left. Last I read was that the politicos have yet to decide on the size of the dividend. The State needs to do away with that system or institute an income tax to get much of it back. Sad, but true.
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My entitlement is deserved and necessary. All other entitlements are a huge ripoff of the taxpayers money and should be abolished.
 
Htaylor said:
And that dividend may well be cut in half this year so the State still has a little bit left. Last I read was that the politicos have yet to decide on the size of the dividend. The State needs to do away with that system or institute an income tax to get much of it back. Sad, but true.
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The only reason I signed up for the dividend was because they were talking about doing a final payment of $25,000. I was going to take the money and run.

It was funny to me to hear the villagers whine about doing away with the PFD. ''That is my kids college fund.....don't take it away.!!!"

Of course they could not even spell college correctly much less ever set foot on a campus somewhere. But it did help fund a lot of new 4 wheelers.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
'k good luck with that.
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It's hyperbole.. but the old adage of the frog in boiling water vs frog in water that slowly heats up is true. If you actually tally up what the government spends their money on, what the politicians pay themselves, etc., it's quite comical that they have the audacity to call themselves broke and keep going back to the private sector folks for money.. it's crazy (and not relegated to just Alaska)

I've long felt that politicians should earn their pay based off some factor that looks at their constituents' earnings and employment figures.. want to give yourself a raise Mr Politician, ok, find a way to get your constituents more work and higher paying jobs

Htaylor said:
There are however local sales taxes. Gas tax, which pays for roads is only 14 cents/gallon in Alaska compared to Californina and Pennsylvania where it is over 50 cents/gallon. The State of Alaska is broke, so very little money to hand out for road building and such.
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But that is the state's fault, not AKBill's who now has to flush $4K in the toilet. Alaska has $50 Billion of oil money in the bank.. this is why the taxes are so low, because they're "rich" with oil money. Mind you, Alaska made plenty of money: https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_state_budget_and_finances if they're broke that's their fault... if I go into credit card debt then I can't call my boss and say "hey guess what, I need a bonus because I don't know how to budget, and by the way if you don't pay it you'll go to prison" ..

My favorite is the "spending by function" - I love how they just put more than 50% of spending in "other" category. A pathetic 0.9% goes to public assistance and only about 20% goes to education... yet somehow when taxes and budgets are concerned the first thing the politicians tell you is that they have no more for education and public assistance and pull on the voters heart strings about that... really the issue is that they're pocketing more than half the money for "other" - the *Note* tries to make it seem like the "other" goes to worthy causes, but you know deep down that most of that 50% is going to "general aid to local governments".

upload_2019-6-21_15-20-29.png

Many of these politicians are pulling in north of $90K.. and that's just the "public" figure .. https://www.adn.com/politics/article/alaska-senate-pay-2012/2013/02/21/

..I still don't really know what the government does with my tax money

/rant over/ sorry folks!!
 
Why should some villager give up his dividend check so the roads in Juneau and Anchorage get paved ?

The nice thing about 'specials' is that those who create the cost for an infrastructure project are the ones to pay it. Much better solution than paying those things out of general tax revenue. Now I wish the same applied to the school district....
 
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weilke said:
The nice thing about 'specials' is that those who create the cost for an infrastructure expense are the ones to pay it. Much better solution than paying those things out of general tax revenue.
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It's one thing if the neighbors all get together and decide they want to put a sidewalk in front of the school and a crosswalk, then agree what the costs should be, break the costs down, and make it happen. That's awesome! What I find wrong with the picture is that someone gets a surprise bill and now it's on you to pay

As you know I live in CA and and the taxes here.. are NOT cheap.. I like to pretend that it pays for the good weather, but frankly it sucks. Mind you, having moved from Boston I do feel like at least the San Diego government is less corrupt, but Mass taxes were no better

But what got me here too was my old house was in a "high fire risk" zone so we got additional assessments to help pay for the fire protection services.. the fee was negligible, but I didn't quite understand where the THOUSANDS of dollars that got paid on my house assessment each year were going if they then come back and say "hey you already paid the house tax, but we need an extra $75 if you don't want your house to burn down"

-at least the yearly registration fees for my dog are cheap, and pay for the free poop-bag dispensers on nearly every corner
 
Tantalum said:
It's one thing if the neighbors all get together and decide they want to put a sidewalk in front of the school and a crosswalk, then agree what the costs should be, break the costs down, and make it happen. That's awesome! What I find wrong with the picture is that someone gets a surprise bill and now it's on you to pay
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I probably shouldn't be a suprise. That's just how some jurisdictions finance their infrastruction and I doubt that it is a secret. When I bought in Fargo, ND the realtor was very clear on how the system of 'specials' works and how it affects the price of properties. A casual look at Juneau Boroughs taxation website suggests that they actually have a pretty fair system in place. You only pay for general service roads if you are connected to one and you only pay for fire protection if you are in the fire service area:

https://www.juneau.org/finance/taxinfo.php

But what got me here too was my old house was in a "high fire risk" zone so we got additional assessments to help pay for the fire protection services.. the fee was negligible, but I didn't quite understand where the THOUSANDS of dollars that got paid on my house assessment each year were going if they then come back and say "hey you already paid the house tax, but we need an extra $75 if you don't want your house to burn down"
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How to cover the cost for fire protection is an interesting question. My place in MD is in a county with a countywide fire-tax. It's simply a mill rate charged against the assessed value. So the person with a $150k townhouse in the urban core of the county pays 1/5th of the firetax than the person with a 750k riverfront property 8 miles from the next firestation. If the owner in the townhouse sees his dryer catch fire, the first engine will be on site 6 minutes in with two more to follow before 10 minutes are up. The owner 8 miles from the rural station will have flames through the roof by the time the fire department shows up yet he paid 5 times the amount of tax. Fair ? In some places you have 'pay to spray' fire departments where you only receive fire protection if you pay a subscription fee every year. Brutal, but in a way the most equitable way of going about it.
 
GRG55 said:
Brings back bad memories. 30 years ago, one week before my wedding, the city came along unannounced and "prepped" the perfectly good road in front of my house for re-paving. Used some sort of machine to grind up the top layer of asphalt along the whole block. Then they came along and poured oil all over the rough surface. And then nothing. Like everybody disappeared into a black hole.

We planned a get together for all the out of town guests the day after the wedding at my place. My guests had to step through the oil in their dress shoes to get to my sidewalk. I was furious, but I discovered that age old lesson: you can't fight City Hall.
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I used to work at City Hall. You can definitley win - just don't talk to the employees/bureacrats; go straight to your elected rep. . .his/her central business is being re-elected. A pleasant call, followed by an email and a donation to his/her campaign will get you some action. Unless it crosses up a better healed group.
 
Busflyer said:
You guys have to register a dog?
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Ahhh Kalifornia.

Our roads are maintained by the city, repairs are paid for through our local income taxing property tax,which isn't cheap. That said, our roads spend most of their time horrid condition.
 
Our township repaves approximately 7 miles of roads every summer. It is all covered by our municipal taxes. Our taxes are pretty reasonable in comparison to a majority of the other municipalities in our county and the high level of services provided
 
People fascinate me sometimes. I've moved around a bit over the course of my life. Of all the places I've lived, I can't think of a instance where I would have described the roads as being bad. Certainly all of them had sections of road that needed some work, but overall the roads were fine. And yet every place I've lived, it seems there were always plenty of people who if asked, would tell you the local roads are horrible.

Its a 30 mile drive from home to work for me. I don't think there is a single pothole or even a place where a pothole was patched on that entire route. But if you ask some of my coworkers, our local roads are the worst in the country. :rolleyes:
 
Juliet Hotel said:
local roads are the worst in the country.
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People like to be dramatic, it's the same reason why getting an order wrong at the restaurant is a life-changing catastrophe, and why every winter when it snows in Massachusetts the media and people act like they have never seen snow
 
Busflyer said:
You guys have to register a dog?
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I'm actually not sure what the exact laws are, but mine is registered and his collar has a dog's version of an SSN on it. Actually don't mind it, the fee is nominal, something like $15 (much higher if not fixed, like $70), and it pays for the poop bags on the street corners, dog parks, etc., also, if he ever gets lost then his chip is tied to his state information so if he's brought to a shelter it'll be easy for them to match him to me

Individualized registration and taxes like that actually make sense to me, someone has to pay for animal control, the dog parks, and things like that, so it makes sense to me to put that burden on the people we have dogs and cats than the typical taxpayer
 
Sounds like you have a private road, that is going public and your neighbors voted to have it paved so all abutters have to pay their share. You have to pay attention to those legal letters and calls for votes.
 
Tantalum said:
I'm actually not sure what the exact laws are, but mine is registered and his collar has a dog's version of an SSN on it. Actually don't mind it, the fee is nominal, something like $15 (much higher if not fixed, like $70), and it pays for the poop bags on the street corners, dog parks, etc., also, if he ever gets lost then his chip is tied to his state information so if he's brought to a shelter it'll be easy for them to match him to me

Individualized registration and taxes like that actually make sense to me, someone has to pay for animal control, the dog parks, and things like that, so it makes sense to me to put that burden on the people we have dogs and cats than the typical taxpayer
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Ok. That actually sounds reasonable.
 
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