In 2016, I found a home in Grand Chute that had been on the market for three years. During that time, Grand Chute had announced that it would be putting in a new street with curb, gutters, and sidewalks on Gillett Street, but had not announced how the cost would be calculated for Gillett Street properties. Therefore, a buyer of this home would not know how much the assessment would be until after they had purchased it.
In 2016, we purchased the home for less than the asking price, hoping the future road assessment would not be assessed higher than what the owner reduced the price.
After purchasing this home, I started to attend some of the Grand Chute meetings regarding road assessments to try and find out how much we were going to have to pay for the new road construction
In March of 2018, Gillett Street residents were given an opportunity at a public hearing to ask questions regarding their special assessments and why the amounts were so high. Some of the homeowners were assessed over $20,000 – businesses were assessed double or more than the homeowners. My neighbor was assessed $17,000 on a home that they had lived in for over 50 years. You would think that paying taxes on a home for 50 years would have paid for their portion of the road construction!
There was a question – which went unanswered – why a previous town chairperson who owned property on Gillett had no assessment for his property. To my knowledge they never were assessed for the road in front of their large property. We came to find out that the assessed were the property owners who had driveways on Gillett Street; those homeowners on cul-de-sacs, or roads, where Gillett was the only way out of their cul-de-sac’s roads, had no assessments. Also, for homeowners like myself, who lived on a corner lot with our driveway on a different street, we had no assessment, which was good for me, but not so good for the ‘driveway’ owners on Gillett. It is a shame that a Town Board would care so little for Grand Chute residents that they champion creating financial hardships on the very people who they are supposed to be representing.
While attending Town Board meetings in the past few years, I learned there were six lawsuits over road assessments in the past few years, but little is known of the costs of these lawsuits or judgments paid out, due to the meetings being in closed session. In the past four years, there were new Town Board Supervisors who encouraged paying for roads through the Grand Chute annual budget and for a few years, that actually happened – and with a little surplus in the budget at the end of the fiscal year. However, since the last election, Town Board Members have changed and now the new members are back talking again about special assessments. Why do you think that is?
A survey will come out soon to see how Grand Chute residents want roads paid for in the Town of Grand Chute. I am confused – aren’t you? If roads could be paid out of the annual budget for the past few years, why would I want to have special assessments brought back to the residents of Grand Chute? What do you think? Do you want targeted residents to have to pay for roads that so many people travel on? Don’t you think our taxes should pay for the needs of Grand Chute – like roads?
Stay tuned – you will get to voice your opinion soon!
We live on a corner, paid for two streets to get rid of the ditch and have new roads with curbs. Within months of our “new” road(s) water mains broke, we had spots that sunk, now we have a spot Grand Chute refused to fix that is gravel. We were told it had to “settle” for a year.. now we are told it could be another year before thy fix it. It was “contracted out”. So why did other roads not have to settle? Perkins had two spots that a watermain broke and were patched within a few weeks. The road by Pick’N Save also patched within a few weeks. In front of the lullaby shop patched within a couple days.. but Applegate needs to “settle”. We have the worst roads in Grand Chute, our taxes should of been enough to keep the roads nice. We should not have to continually patch every road. We need better materials used to have to roads last more than a year and should not have sink hole areas on every street. Who will be paying for the cars with scratches, or worse when they hit a hole and it causes more serious issues? Grand Chute should be embarressed that we have the worst roads
In the Fox Valley.