Subdivision seeks county paving funds

TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Residents of the Timberview Estates subdivision, located just north of the Maryville city limits, are seeking county assistance in order to repave their aging streets. Under a proposed Neighborhood Improvement District financing scheme, the county would fund the overlay project, with Timberview homeowners taxing themselves in order to repay the county over a period of several years.

Unless they live along a state-maintained highway or lettered blacktop, most homeowners residing outside one of Nodaway County’s incorporated communities make due with gravel roads.

Most, but not all.

Two Polk Township subdivisions, both adjoining the Maryville city limits, have paved streets paid for ultimately at the expense of residents through a mechanism called a Neighborhood Improvement District.

Under an NID, homeowners essentially ask the county to provide public funds that are used to pave their road or roads. The district’s residents then tax themselves over a period of years to repay the county.

North District County Commissioner Robert Westfall said the county provides the funding, taken from reserves, interest free.

The County Commission is currently considering an NID request from Timberview Estates, a collection or 20 or so upscale homes on large lots that are across North Main Street, east of the municipal solid waste transfer station.

Polk Township’s — and Nodaway County’s — only other NID subdivision, Golf Tee Lane, runs along what is basically an extension of College Avenue (Fourth Street), close to the northern property line of the Maryville Country Club.

Nodaway County South District Commissioner Robert Stiens said Wednesday that the Timberview request is the third since the subdivision was established and the first repaving project there in nearly a decade.

Streets looping through the development were originally overlayed with a chip-and-seal treatment, a combination of gravel aggregate and asphalt. The chip-and-seal material was later covered with a thin layer of asphalt pavement, Stiens said.

Now, residents are asking the county to provide enough funding to overlay streets with an asphalt surface five inches thick.

The three-member County Commission has yet to approve the request, but Stiens said Timberview residents have already sought contractor bids on the project and that Herzog Contracting of St. Joseph submitted a low bid of approximately $123,000.

Stiens said the cost per homeowner per year for the repaving project, assuming repayment over seven years, will probably come to between $750 and $800, and that some funds for repair and maintenance will likely be included.

He said a maximum 20-year repayment period is allowed for NIDs, which also have a funding limit set at 10 percent of the county’s assessed valuation, an amount totaling well over $300,000,000.

The Timberview project won’t come anywhere close to either ceiling.

Stiens said it is his understanding that snow removal for the subdivision is provided by Polk Township, which clears the streets using a truck with a blade.