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Commission approves hearing of necessity for 2025 Cape Seal special assessment district
Summary
After a public hearing with residents expressing concern about past pavement quality and costs, the Birmingham City Commission declared the Cape Seal Special Assessment District for streets in the city’s northeast and set a confirmation hearing for Jan. 27.
The Birmingham City Commission on Jan. 13 declared a hearing of necessity for a special assessment district to fund the 2025 Cape Seal program, approving the item in a roll-call vote and scheduling a confirmation hearing for the commission meeting on Jan. 27, 2025.
City engineering staff told the commission the Cape Seal program will treat mostly gravel/unimproved east–west streets in the northeast corner of Birmingham — including Yorkshire, Dorchester, Buckingham, Endeavour, Yosemite and Yankee — plus Ann Street (Frank to the dead end) and North Long (South Long to Shipman). Melissa Coda, engineering project manager, said the overall project cost is $504,564.95 and the project footprint is roughly 14,740 linear feet, with 10,463.6 feet of assessable frontage. Under the city’s residential assessment policy, the short side is assessed at 85% and the long side (typically the corner side yard) at 25% of the calculated cost.
Residents at the public hearing urged caution and sought assurances about long-term quality. Tony Vitale, who lives on Yorkshire, said work done after a prior treatment in 2010 showed “bumps and dips” and recurring groundwater problems near Coolidge that led to repeated patching; he asked the commission to reconsider whether the cost allocation to property owners was justified. Tony Vitale said, “It just seems like another band aid with this chip seal and slurry.”
Glenn Couch, regional vice president at UniProp and representative for property owners on Dane Street, asked how the assessment was tied to county parcel (SIDWELL) numbers; city staff confirmed the special-assessment roll follows Oakland County SIDWELL identifiers rather than street addresses.
Coda described two treatment methods: Method 1 (spot patch and double chip seal plus slurry) estimated at $23.47 per assessed foot on streets such as Endeavour, Buckingham and Yosemite; and Method 2 (pulverize, double chip seal and slurry) for streets showing deeper degradation (Ann, Dorchester, Northlawn, Yankee, Yorkshire and Yosemite) at $42.35 per assessed foot. She said method 2 is used where the chip-seal layers are failing, gravel is exposed, or cross-section differences require pulverization to produce a suitable base for the new treatment.
Commissioners acknowledged the tradeoffs between full engineered reconstruction and Cape Seal. Commissioner Katie Schaefer described the city’s two-track approach — continuing to offer petition-driven full road engineering for property owners who want a reconstructed concrete road while advancing scheduled cape-seal treatments for unimproved streets — and encouraged neighbors who prefer full reconstruction to pursue the petition option. Engineering staff said the Cape Seal treatment typically lasts seven to 10 years and cannot guarantee stormwater drainage improvements because the underlying roadbed on unimproved streets is unengineered gravel that can shift over time.
The commission voted to declare the necessity and approve creation of the special assessment district for the 2025 Cape Seal program; a public hearing to confirm the assessment roll is set for the Jan. 27, 2025 commission meeting.
