Palm Beach approves assessments to pay for utility line burial

Despite many residents’ objections at a public hearing, the Town Council unanimously voted to impose special assessments on property owners to pay for the burial of all overhead utility lines on the island.

About 100 residents packed the council chambers Wednesday at Town Hall. During a two-hour public comment period, some said they don’t want to be assessed for 30 years for a project they don’t want or believe to be unnecessary. Others said they believe the transformers or switch cabinets, which are installed on 6-inch concrete pads on the ground as part of a buried utility system, will be hazardous or prone to failure because of flooding on a barrier island such as Palm Beach.

“Digging up the streets … it’s just going to ruin Palm Beach,” said Michael Scharf, a former zoning commissioner and candidate for a Town Council seat. Scharf asked the council to vote against the assessments and reconsider the undergrounding project as a whole.

The town estimates the undergrounding project will cost around $90 million to $92 million and take about nine years to complete. Scharf warned that long-term capital improvements have a way of exceeding their budgets.

Council members said the decision to bury all overhead power, cable television and telephone lines had already been made by a previous council, and that the purpose of Wednesday’s hearing was to hear comment and answer questions from the public before voting to impose the assessments.

Mayor Gail Coniglio and council members said burying the utilities is good for the future. It will reduce power outages and fires or explosions caused by conflicts between overhead power lines and tree limbs, especially in the North End.

Coniglio told residents she understands there are strong feelings on both sides of the issue.

“My husband [Frank Coniglio] and I don’t agree on this at all,” she said. “He has said more than once, ‘Why are you doing this? Our taxes are already way too high.’ … I said it’s about the future of our town. It’s about our grandchildren.”

If the town doesn’t bury its utilities, Florida Power & Light will proceed with plans to install taller, concrete storm-hardened utility poles along the main streets on the island, Town Manager Tom Bradford said. He said many residents have said the industrial-looking concrete poles are not consistent with the town’s aesthetic standards.

Assessment concerns

Other residents had questions about their assessments, or criticisms of the assessment method.

“You should reject this biased and unfair assessment plan,” South End resident Larry Goldberg said. He said the aesthetic improvement is “questionable. We don’t want to pay $150 million [$90 million plus interest on bond debt for 30 years] for this disaster.”

The Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office will notify property owners of the amount of their assessments in August, Bradford said. The assessments will then appear as a separate line on November tax bills. The assessments are for 30 years and will be used to repay up to $90 million in bonds to pay for the project. Each owner’s assessment is based on a formula that assigns credits for the aesthetic, service reliability and safety benefits to each property.

Owners can appeal their assessments if they believe there is an error, and the town is making adjustments in some cases. As of Wednesday, the average annual assessment is $1,134 for a single-family home, and $316 for a condo, according to the town’s Finance Department. Property owners also have the option of paying a lump sum prepayment so they won’t have to pay interest over 30 years.

Bradford said assessments are a fair way to repay the debt because they account for the benefits to each property. If the town were to repay the debt with property taxes, then owners in neighborhoods that have buried their utilities would have to pay twice, he said.

The town plans to accomplish the undergrounding in eight phases. Phase one, in the North End between Onondaga Avenue and the Palm Beach Inlet, and in the South End between Sloan’s Curve and the south town limit, begins this summer and is expected to be complete in about 18 months.

‘Good, reliable systems’

Public Works Director Paul Brazil said there are a lot of misunderstandings about undergrounded utilities and their vulnerability to flooding.

“Extensive areas of the town are already undergrounded,” he said. “We already have 386 transformers sitting on the ground right now. I’m not getting any calls from those residents for repairs. They are not failing. They’ve been good, reliable systems.”

Councilwoman Bobbie Lindsay said she voted in favor of the March 2016 undergrounding referendum in which voters narrowly approved $90 million in bonds. Lindsay lives in the North End within the phase one construction area and will have a transformer on her lawn.

Lindsay said she has done research and talked to officials with the utilities and other town governments with buried utilities, such as Jupiter Island.

“When [Hurricane] Matthew came through here, I lost power,” Lindsay said. “Nobody in Jupiter Island lost power, and the winds were stronger up there … I believe safety, reliability and aesthetics will be far superior to what we have today.”

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