Havre committee planning push for SIDs to repair infrastructure

The Havre City Council Streets and Sidewalks Committee met Monday to hold a follow-up discussion about how the city could utilize special improvement districts, and to review the information given by Montana State University Extension Local Government Center Director Dan Clark last month.

“I am hopeful,” committee member Denise Brewer said. “I know we’ve tried other things and I think having Dan Clark come here was a really positive way for us to maybe look at some new ways of doing things.”

She said that a number of the roads in Havre are close to 100 years old and much of the infrastructure is failing. Havre has previously used SIDs, often creating them for work as new areas of the town were developed, but has not been utilizing them to pay for infrastructure work in recent history.

Committee member Sarah McKinney said that at Monday’s meeting, committee members, the mayor and a number of community members talked about the process for establishing new SIDs. She added that the committee brainstormed a number of ideas and wanted to see what the city could pursue to help rebuild Havre’s infrastructure. 

“The overarching thing is that people are going to have to pay to fix their streets,” she said. “… It’s not as scary as people think it is.”

People who participate in SIDs are making an improvement to their neighborhoods and increasing the home’s property value, she said. If they sell their property, the next owner will continue the process of paying for the benefits to the neighborhood.

In an SID, the city takes out a long-term low-interest loan to pay for the work, and the property owners pay the city to fund the loan payments. That way, the property owners can stretch the cost of repairing the infrastructure over time, often over 20 to 30 years.

Not only does the work increase the properties’ value, it also fixes the roads and the infrastructure beneath, she said. In some parts of the city infrastructure is nearly 100 years old and was built with clay or cast iron pipes, which have decayed over the years. If the city was able to rebuild the infrastructure, the pipes would be polyvinyl chloride pipes, or PVC, which can last more than a century, she added. 

The investments people make with participating in SIDs can help create long-lasting benefit to Havre, she said.

“I feel like we can fix the problem, but everybody is going to have to admit that they are going to pay more,” McKinney said. “… But it’s going to end up being the only option.”

Brewer said that the committee wants to meet with the Capital Improvement Plan Committee and talk about tentative figures for establishing SIDs. She added that after speaking with the Capital Improvement Plan Committee they may start looking at smaller areas to establish SIDs.

The Streets and Sidewalk Committee will pick three different areas around Havre which are in need of improvements and approach the homeowners in the area about possibly establishing an SID.

“Our taxes are already high enough, and I know they don’t want a mill levy to increase our taxes, so we kind of came up with a conclusion,” she said. “We think the best way is to just go to the areas that really need it the most and they would be the ones that would benefit from it the most.”

She added that at this time the city is not looking at a citywide SID.

Brewer said the committee is looking at seeing if the city can pay any of the costs of improving the infrastructure.

To create an SID, the majority of property owners in the proposed area have to approve the creation of the SID.

If enough people come forward and oppose establishing an SID, the city cannot move forward with the project.

But, hopefully, she said, at least one of the three areas they select will agree to establish an SID. She added that once at least one is complete people may be more in support of the program after seeing the actual work being done.

“We are trying,” she said.

She added that if people are interested in establishing an SID they can contact anyone on City Council, the mayor or public works. 

“We have got to start somewhere,” Brewer said.

Another factor in Havre’s infrastructure is the amount of funding the city has available, Brewer said.

“We hear from the state all the time, and the federal government, about infrastructure, infrastructure, and yet they don’t give us any help,” she said.

She added that the state takes a large portion of the gas tax the city collects, and unless the state gives more funding back to the local governments, infrastructure in small towns across the state are only going to get worse. 

McKinney said that people need to talk to their legislators and the city needs to make more of a push in the Legislature to secure more local funding. She said the state has the ability to authorize the city to establish additional taxes, such as a bed tax or a local gas tax. She added that no one likes higher taxes but the city is in desperate need of repairs.

“A lot of the conversations have to happen in the Legislature and get them to give us more of our money back that we send to the state,”she said. “… We have expenses too,” she said.

“The main thing is that there is going to have to be an SID,” she said. “If people want their streets and infrastructure repaired, and we probably need to start talking to our legislators a little more.”

Brewer said that if people are interested in learning more about SIDs they contact her at 390-5280 or call city hall at 265-6719.