County 14 Additional Spending By City Officials

This is an email response from the Anoka County Commissioner, Rhonda Sivarajah regarding the county road 14 budget and how our officials chose to increase spending. It may be time to call for a State audit to see exactly what else they have been up to. We wish to extend a thank you to Rhonda for her assistance!

Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: Centerville Budget--additional information

I also wanted to pass along this information regarding the County Rd.14 Main Street project. As you can see in the article below, the administrator seems to be trying to put blame on the County Rd. 14 project for large tax increases. This is not an accurate statement. In fact, if you look at the information provided by our highway dept. at the bottom of the page, you can see that for the entire road project, they actually have very little cost after taking into account the federal dollars and the $125,000 they will be reimbursed for the trail after completion. The greatest costs they are incurring are costs that the county is not requiring as part of the project, but rather are a city decision to add streetscaping to the project. If you look at the dollars being spent you can see that Centerville's costs that are required are just a small fraction of what they are choosing to spend. Here is the article from the Citizen printed in June 2008 Extra Tax Burden Of Project Considered Every home in the city will face an extra $364 on its annual tax bill if a scaled-down version of the 2009 street improvement project goes ahead. That was the result of analysis done by city staff on the tax burden facing residents next year if a smaller project, costing $4.5 million in total, is given the go-ahead by the Centerville City Council. The findings were presented to the council at its May 28 meeting. The figure of $364.11 is calculated for a typical $250,000 property and is made up of $148.20 for the shared, city portion of the street improvement project, $107.95 for the city's share of the CSAH-14project and $107.95 for the city's share of the Backage Road project. Citizens face having to pay the CSAH-14 and Backage Road portions of the total regardless of whether the council orders the 2009 street improvement project. Below is a breakdown of expenses related to the road project as outlined by our highway dept. Below is a summary of Centerville's costs associated with items required for the reconstruction of Main St. (CSAH 14).
Total Project Construction Cost
- $13,485,213.49
Centerville's Total Responsibilities
- $1,211,496.49 (8.98% of Const. Cost)
Federal Funds Prorated/Credited to Centerville
- $272,410.00
Centerville's Cost for Upgraded Utilities
- $163,700.82
Centerville's Cost for Streetscaping
-$517,007.80
Centerville's Cost due to County Project
$258,377.87 (1.92% of Const. Cost)

Of the $96,919.72 we will charge the city for engineering & administration of the contract that is in addition to these construction costs, $54,456.69 is due to the city's enhanced utility work and streetscaping. Note too that the trail and sidewalk costs are included in the city's> costs due to the road construction (not identified as a city option), and they will be reimbursed $125,000 for a portion of the trail costs via the Metro Trail grant program after the trail is completed which will further reduce the city's total obligation towards the project.
Sincerely,
Rhonda Sivarajah
Anoka County Commissioner
763-274-4213

Contact us privately with City information, news and personal stories. All contact information will be kept private and not posted on the blog unless requested.Email Centervilleblog@yahoo.com