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3 <br />MEMORANDUM <br />TO: County Commissioners <br />COPIES: John Link, County Manager <br />Rod Visser, Assistant County Manager <br />Geof Gledhill, County Attorney <br />Pam Jones, Purchasing/Central Services Director <br />Donna Coffey, Budget Director <br />Craig Benedict, Planning Director <br />Ken Chavious, Finance Director <br />FROM: Paul Thames, PE, County Engineer <br />DATE: August 25, 2006 <br />SUBJECT: Utility Extension Financing by Means of Utility Assessment Process -West <br />Ten Middle School/Buckhorn EDD-Community Utility Extension Assessment <br />Over the years, there have been BOCC questions and discussion about strategies for <br />recovering all or some porticn of County funds expended in utility extensicn projects.. One <br />such strategy is the utility assessment process, which involves calculating the pro rata <br />share of project costs for each property benefiting from a utility project and billing the <br />property owners for those costs. Commissioners have expressed a specific interest in <br />evaluating a utility assessment scenario for the Buckhorn Economic Development District <br />(EDD)/Gravelly Hill Middle School water and sewer utility extension project. <br />The purpose of this memorandum is to provide information for BOCC review by means of: <br />• an overview of the administrative process for typical utility assessment projects <br />(pages 4-7); and <br />• a utility assessment facts summary, (pages 8-9); and <br />• a minimum timeline required to initiate a typical utility assessment process (pages <br />10-11) <br />The NC General Statutes specify many of the requirements related to assessment <br />generated funding of utility extension projects, particularly insofar as scheduling public <br />hearings, means (bases) of apportioning costs and which casts can be assessed, are <br />concerned, In the following pages, a comprehensive generic summary of the step-by-step <br />assessment process as specified in the North Carolina General Statutes is provided for <br />BOGC review. Also provided is a fact sheet outlining: a) the statutory bases for <br />determining the pro rata share of costs applicable to each property owner included in an <br />assessment project; b) the types of properties or property owners that are statutorily <br />exempted from an assessment process; and c) the project casts that can be recovered by <br />an assessment process. <br />