GLADSTONE — In a historic, city-charter-changing vote, Gladstone’s residents have chosen to alter the course of operations for the municipality’s project funding. Special assessments — which have been a mode for city commissioners of the last 135 years to collect fees from residents in certain districts to partially provide for the cost of surveying, planning, assessing, constructing, repairing and maintaining public structures, roads and fixtures — have been removed in one fell swoop. With 1,754 voters (66.92%) responding “yes” to the initiative driven by a citizen petition and 867 (33.08%) saying “no”, the twenty-eight-section eleventh chapter of Gladstone’s charter was nullified and replaced with the words, “the commission shall not have the power to levy and collect special assessments. The City of Gladstone shall immediately cease all actions to collect any special assessment.”

The City of Gladstone had 3,525 active voters in 2020; assuming roughly the same number still reside there, about 1,100 abstained from the vote.

Michael O’Connor was the driving force behind the ballot proposal before entering the race for Gladstone City commissioner.

Until this point, when certain projects have been done in the city, property owners in districts determined to benefit from the work have been charged a fraction of the cost. The payments were stretched out for periods of years — eight to 15, in the cases of the most recent ones — but people had the option to pay the total amount off early. People who have already paid will not get their money back, but those who had payments remaining are off the hook.

Five special assessment taxes had been ongoing, though work was already completed. The last several special assessments in the City of Gladstone were for work on Ninth Street; Fourth Street; North 15th Street; on North Bluff; and in southwest Gladstone on Lowrie, Minneapolis and 18th Streets. The property owners’ share of the costs amounted to 12%, 26%, 45%, 66%, and 42%, respectively. As financing was still ongoing, the city was expecting to continue to collect the remaining outstanding payments for several more years. However, with the passing of this ballot proposal, those funds that had been counted on are no more, and the city will have to find a new way to continue paying off the bills.