ne BlaiCityConnect
W W W . C I . B L A I N E . M N . U S
May/June 2012
Blaine to be Officially Recognized as Yellow Ribbon Community Back in April, 2011, Blaine held a kick-off meeting to begin the process for becoming a nationally recognized Yellow Ribbon Community. Over 50 community members and leaders attended that meeting to learn about Beyond the Yellow Ribbon (BTYR) efforts throughout Minnesota and locally. Beyond the Yellow Ribbon is a comprehensive program that unites all areas within a community for the purpose of connecting Servicemembers and their families with community support, training, services, and resources. This spring Blaine will become the newest Yellow Ribbon Community to be proclaimed by the Governor on May 17 at the Saint Paul Saints home-opener baseball game. Over the last several months, the Steering Committee has worked to develop a sustainable, organization-specific action plan that outlines how the Blaine community will support our Servicemembers and their families. Some of the key components of the Action Plan entail building
a database of volunteers and businesses to help with assistance requests, holding monthly meetings, organizing an annual Welcome Home event for all Blaine Servicemembers and their families, awareness training for police officers and other city employees, and creating a resource list of support efforts throughout the community. The Steering Committee meets on a monthly basis the third Monday of every month at 6 p.m. at Blaine City Hall, and is open to anyone interested in learning more or becoming involved. If you are a Servicemember or family of a Servicemember and have any questions, needs, or are interested in volunteering in any way, please contact Rebecca Olson 763-785-6120 or rolson@ci.blaine.mn.us Through these efforts, the Blaine Yellow Ribbon committee is striving to meet the Mission set forth in our Action Plan: In continuing Minnesota’s proud history of supporting our nation’s military, Blaine Yellow Ribbon support efforts unite key areas within our community to leverage existing support activities, build awareness, make commitments, and take action to recognize and support Service members, Military Families, and Employers.
City of Blaine Pavement Management Program The City of Blaine has a commitment to maintain over 230 miles of city streets in a condition that provides for functional, safe, and efficient travel in a cost efficient manner. In the fall of 2010, the Blaine City Council created a comprehensive Pavement Management Program (PMP) with the goal of maximizing the life span and maintaining the quality of City streets in the most cost efficient manner for taxpayers. The City designed the program to provide a continuing source of funding, implement a system to track street conditions, and plan a schedule of street maintenance and rehabilitation. Funding for the PMP is from a combination of City funds, Municipal State Aid funds, and assessments to benefitting properties. All streets have a limited life span of about 25-30 years. It is possible to extend the life of a street with proper care and maintenance. Crack sealing and pothole patching are the most common type of maintenance used to extend the life of a street. To significantly extend the life of a street, the City uses a more intensive and costly maintenance practice, bituminous overlay, where a portion of the street is ground off and then repaved with a new layer of bituminous over the existing road. This results in lower overall street costs to the taxpayers when compared to letting the street naturally age and completely reconstructing it once it fails. Even with a comprehensive maintenance program as described above, all streets will eventually require reconstruction. This typically occurs once the pavement fails or becomes too damaged for a bituminous overlay. Reconstruction of a street is costly and involves complete removal of existing bituminous pavement, repair or replacement of the gravel base and curb and gutter, storm sewer repair or installation, and paving a new bituminous road surface.
In conjunction with instituting the PMP, the City Council revised the Special Assessment Policy (SAP) to provide a uniform, fair, and equitable system for proportioning street project costs between benefitting property owners and the taxpayers of the City. The old SAP did not assess bituminous overlays. The City funded overlay projects from the general tax levy, which did not provide enough money to keep up with the amount of streets that needed an overlay each year. As a result, streets could have fallen into a state of disrepair that would require more expensive reconstruction projects to fix. Under the old SAP, the City assessed 100% of the costs of a street reconstruction project to benefitting properties (generally defined as properties abutting the street project). In some cases, this created a financial burden on property owners who were assessed many thousands of dollars for their street reconstruction project. Because of this hardship for property owners, street reconstruction projects became controversial, and very few were done. To help rectify this situation, the City revised the SAP to institute an assessment for bituminous overlays to provide additional funding and help reduce the backlog of streets waiting for an overlay, saving them from needing a more costly reconstruction. The rate (set in 2011 dollars and indexed for inflation) is $500 per residential lot, or $10 per front foot of commercial, industrial, and high-density residential properties. In addition, the City Council reduced the assessment rates for full street reconstruction projects to 25% of the project costs to benefitting residential properties, and 50% of the project costs to benefitting commercial, (continued on page 8)