Patterson goes to court for paving assessments

PATTERSON — The City Council on Monday approved plans to sue property owners who haven’t paid their paving assessments if the city receives no response after giving final notice.
The council held a special meeting Monday to address past due paving assessments totaling $24,182.96, Mayor Rodney Grogan said. The past due paving assessments were part of more than $1 million worth of assessments issued to pay for paving work on Kelli Drive, David Drive, Leo Street and Mike Drive, Grogan said.
An ordinance, which went into effect in 2002, gave the city the right to borrow more than $1 million to pay for the paving of four streets, Grogan said. The city paid for the project, and was then to be reimbursed with paving assessments from each property owner based on the owner’s amount of property frontage along the roadway paved, Grogan said. Property owners were allowed to choose a one-time payment or pay over 10 years, he said.
According to the list of past due paving assessments provided to The Daily Review by the city, 29 assessments are outstanding. One of the property owners on the list is paying the assessment in monthly installments while another property owner has declared bankruptcy, according to the document.
On Monday, the council authorized City Attorney Russel Cremaldi to reissue a letter through certified mail informing the property owners of the past due assessments. If the city receives no response within 15 days, Cremaldi will move forward with a lawsuit.
Grogan said many of the properties in question have often changed ownership. In a letter dated April 4, 2013, Cremaldi informed the property owners, who had not paid the assessment, of the exact property involved, the exact amount owed and the interest rate, he said.
Under the ordinance, the city is supposed to have a lien on the properties if the assessments were not paid, Cremaldi said. The last paving assessment payment was due Dec. 31, 2012, Cremaldi said.
“We have not filed any suits to have the liens enforced, up to this point, but that is what your remedy is,” Cremaldi said Monday.
The city had some initial success with getting some of the property owners to pay outstanding paving assessments about a year ago, Cremaldi said.
“It seems like we haven’t had any success with this last list of people,” Cremaldi said. “If you want to try and recoup from these people, what you do is file a suit against each and every one of the people who own the properties where the assessment hasn’t been paid.”
The suit would be aimed at getting the lien recognized by the court and then having the property sold to pay off the lien if the owner does not pay the assessment beforehand, Cremaldi said.
If property would be auctioned off at a sheriff’s sale in order to pay the assessment owed to the city, the city would only receive the amount of money it was owed by the property owner upon the sale of the property, Cremaldi said. “In other words, we wouldn’t become the owners of the property,” Cremaldi said.
Councilman Larry Mendoza said, though he believes the council should try to help out people as much as it can, “I don’t think we’re being fair to the rest of the people that went and paid out all their assessments.”
Councilman John Rentrop said, “They’ve been given too many chances already.”
Rentrop does not want to give any property owners the impression, in regard to any future street paving projects, that city officials would just let people make two or three payments of the assessment, and then the city would forget about the rest of the payments, he said.

This story was written by Daily Review staffer Zachary Fitzgerald. Reach him at zfitzgerald@daily-review.com