The following post ran in the Dorchester Times 12 years ago.
In March 2008, America was entering the "Great Recession," Dorchester was preparing to tear down its 1920s school building in order to build the current structure, and Dorchester Times readers were demanding a town vote on whether to expand paved street in our village.
Today, let's take another look at what we were saying a dozen years ago:
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Recently, there has been increased chatter from Dorchester residents who want village leaders to seriously consider a plan to pave Dorchester's streets. Last weekend, the nine staff members of the Dorchester Times voted unanimously to support efforts to pave the majority of the town's streets.
With paved streets will come new home construction; more home improvements; increased property value; less damage to vehicles; better air quality; less money spent on gravel and city employee labor; renewed community pride; and a better quality of life in general.
Supporting paved streets is the easy call. Finding the means to pay for them is a much more difficult task.
We decided to explore the methods of revenue collection used by communities currently paying for new paving projects. We found a variety of approaches.
The City of Lincoln, for example, relies heavily upon "impact fees" that are applied to new homes built in the city's outer limits. Back in 2003, former Lincoln Mayor Don Wesely used a bumpy, dusty gravel road as a backdrop to defend the Capital City's use of the controversial impact fees. Wesely called gravel roads an eyesore and said that an unpaved road is "less safe than a paved road, dusty, a daily problem for the residents ... and the wrong way to build a community."
Smaller communities -- those closer in size to Dorchester -- have similar impact fees. Ceresco has a water and sewer development fee of $2,250 per lot. Malcolm has a tap fee for sewer and water of $250 per lot, plus a sewer and water fee of $2,250 per lot. These fees are used, at least in part, for road improvements.
Of course, Dorchester doesn't have a boom in new home building -- not yet, anyway. Considering that about 75 percent of Dorchester's streets are unpaved, Dorchester would likely need to utilize a bonding program.
Many cities taking on new paving projects have residents vote on a bond issue, typically paid for by an increase in property tax. In the examples the Times found, senior citizens were often exempt from the property tax increase if they are at least 62 years old in the tax year. Most bonding programs also exempt the disabled.
There were some more creative and affordable ways of accomplishing the paving mission. Some communities held special fundraising drives to offset the overall cost. One community even found "sponsors" who donated substantial sums and renamed streets after the largest donors.
We also found one story from rural Washington state in which a small community paved all of its graveled streets thanks to a state grant and donated labor and machinery from a heavy equipment operation school.
The city of Kittitas, Wash. found a team of heavy equipment operators who donated their time, supervision, heavy equipment and the labor in the street paving project. The benefit for the school is that students and others in the program received on-the-job training in an actual project. Washington's state government granted Kittitas $112,644 for paving several streets within the city in the cooperative program. The state funding came from revenue generated by the statewide gas tax, which is similar to Nebraska's gas tax formula. (A portion of Nebraska's gas tax is dedicated to counties and local governments for road projects.)
Regardless of where you stand on the question of whether to pave Dorchester's streets, we can all agree it's hard to envision a wave of new houses or renovations without first seeing concrete trucks in our town.
