Barry Street Special Assessment Letters Deemed Invalid

Barry Street residents will have until 3 March to object

Barry Street, Hillsdale—The City of Hillsdale has deemed invalid both a petition and letters sent by the residents of Barry Street objecting to their proposed special assessment.

The taxpayers of the rubble-road have paid into the city’s road millages for years but are staring down the barrel of an S.A.D.—a municipal fine of $5,000—to get their road fixed.

Though the City Council voted at its meeting last week to ease the burden of special assessments—by lowering the interest rates and extending the payback period—the people of Barry Street remain skeptical.

In November, upon hearing about the potential special assessment for summer of 2026, the residents of Barry Street, in accordance with the City Charter’s procedures, signed a petition and wrote letters objecting to the special assessment.

But in the wake of the invalidation of their prior complaints, residents of Barry Street expressed frustration with the City, which, they argued, either did not know the appropriate objection procedure at first, or did not tell Barry Street residents that their objections were invalid upon their submission.

Barry Street resident Timothy Polelle, who led the efforts to submit the petition and gather letters from his neighbors, said that the process has been confusing, and answers have been hard to come by. In particular, Polelle wondered why the letters submitted early would not become valid upon the public hearing’s scheduling.

“As to why they would not apply now when a hearing is in the offing, there was no answer,” Polelle told the Hillsdalian, adding that he was directed to City Manager David Mackie for further questions.

Przemyslaw Grzesiak, a gym teacher who owns property on Barry Street and submitted a prior letter, told the Hillsdalian that the process has been bogged down by tedium, with ever-shifting goal posts.

“We have sought advice from Councilman Socha only to be misguided, we have petitioned only to be ignored, we have written letters only to have bureaucratic technicalities thrown back at us. It seems that every step of the way, those running the city government are intent upon securing these monies in spite of every protest from the street’s residents. Meanwhile, the Council has no issue dumping money by the tens and hundreds of thousands into an airport which likely no member of Barry Street has ever flown out of. We are the tax-payers; government exists to serve their constituency.”

Grzesiak clarified his comments, noting that he was referring to the City Council’s recent purchase of a $25,000 airplane tug and its appropriation of over $100,000 for the upgrading of hangars at the Hillsdale municipal airport, among other expenditures.

In the laws, the process for objecting to special assessments is unclear at best. The City Charter Chapter 11, section 3 says the following about such efforts:

If, at or prior to final confirmation of any special assessment, more than fifty per cent of the number of owners of privately owned real property to be assessed for any improvement shall object in writing to the proposed improvement, the improvement shall not be made by the proceedings authorized by this chapter without the affirmative vote of seven of the members of the Council.

The above provision grants some discretion to those objecting, only insisting that they submit their objection in writing prior to the Council’s decision; and yet it is conditioned by a different clause found elsewhere in the municipal code. For this reason, the City has rejected both the petition and the letters as invalid, citing the code’s Article V, Section 2-335. It says the following:

On the date set forth in the notice as provided in section 2-334, if more than 50 percent of the number of owners of privately owned real property to be assessed for such improvement shall object in writing to the proposed improvement, the improvement shall not be made without the affirmative vote of seven of the members of the council.

According to the argument, letters of objection are only valid when submitted after the public hearing is announced, up until and possibly through the public hearing. The ordinance, which is ambiguous, might even suggest that only objections submitted on the date of the public hearing are valid.

Council’s public hearing for the Barry Street SAD will be held at its regularly scheduled meeting on 3 March.

Jacob Bruns

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