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Board dissolves DeSoto Drive Road Improvement District after majority of property owners object
Summary
Following a public hearing, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors found protests sufficient and denied the petition to form the DeSoto Drive Road Improvement District; the board terminated the proposed project and dissolved the district process.
The Mohave County Board of Supervisors voted May 19 to deny the petition to form the DeSoto Drive Road Improvement District and to terminate the planned DeSoto Drive road improvement project after hearing public objections.
Public Works staff told the board the improvement petition initially secured signatures representing a majority of parcels and acreage required to advance a district for paving approximately 4.4 miles of DeSoto and Magellan drives. County engineering estimated a construction cost of $572,360, including contingency and construction engineering; assessments would have ranged from about $8,268 to $47,193 per parcel depending on frontage.
At the public hearing three owner protests were filed; staff said that removing those three protests would drop the petition below the 51% threshold for the petition to incur expense. Several property owners, including Karen Summitt and Anna Rich, testified that assessments of tens of thousands of dollars would render their properties effectively unsellable or impose burdens they could not afford, and asked the board to terminate the process.
After hearing testimony and staff remarks, a supervisor moved to deny the petition and dissolve the district; the board approved the motion. Public Works staff noted that if the board did not move forward with the improvement project the property owners would still be liable for the district engineering/design costs assessed across parcels (staff estimated the per‑parcel share of outstanding design costs at $387.06). The board’s denial ends the improvement proceedings and relieves the county of further action on the project for the time being.
Why this matters: The road-improvement district process allows local property owners to petition for a targeted public improvement funded through assessments against benefited parcels. The board’s decision ends the current petition after a small set of property owner protests reduced the petition below the statutory approval threshold.
What’s next: County staff will notify property owners of the denial and collect the outstanding district-engineering cost assessment per parcel; property owners may pursue other options in the future but the county will not proceed with the proposed paving project under the DeSoto Drive district at this time.
