A petition to pave Mount Vernon Boulevard from Custer Avenue to its dead-end was not approved by the City Commission Nov. 11.
By: Mike Koury | Royal Oak Review | Published November 22, 2024
ROYAL OAK — Paving of Mount Vernon Boulevard from Custer Avenue to the dead end was not approved by the City Commission in a 4-3 vote Nov. 11.
This is the 14th time the paving of the road has been denied; most recently, the proposal had been spoken about at the Oct. 28 City Commission meeting, and it was approved for a public hearing 4-3.
The petitioner, Kimberly Martin, a resident of Mount Vernon Boulevard, requested that the road be paved. If the project was approved, it would cost $1,372,935.
Paving the road would have cost $880,000, with $538,000 of the cost being covered by the city’s local fund, and the remainder covered by a special assessment district paid over a maximum period of 15 years. Additionally, staff included the cost to replace the existing water main along this block for an estimated cost of $493,500, according to the proposal document.
A little over half of the residents living on Mount Vernon Boulevard do not agree with the petition that was signed and supported by 46.2% of residents.
A public hearing was held at the Nov. 11 meeting where residents expressed their concerns regarding the costs, loss of neighborhood charm and more.
“I feel that this petition shouldn’t have even gone this far,” Mount Vernon resident Melissa Danou said. “I am a part of the majority of nearly 54% of people who don’t want this road paved.”
Danou went on to mention that if this project was approved, trees would be removed from the area that her family enjoys, which she said are nearly 200 years old. She said the city identified these trees as such.
Danou mentioned that her 8-year-old daughter, Claire, spoke against paving the street alongside her mom, and her father, Robert Danou, on Oct. 28.
“My daughter, Claire, who is 8, said that she doesn’t want to see them (trees) go,” she said. “The disruption and that construction could cause more trees to die and ultimately would dramatically change the look of our road and not in a good way.”
Robert Danou also spoke the night of the public hearing on Nov. 11, outlining his concerns regarding the cost of the project.
“A dead-end street servicing 22 homes does not justify the great cost the entire city will bear as well as the homeowners directly,” Robert Danou said. “The city has suddenly determined that a water main be replaced, nearly $900,000 initially, now another half million. What other surprise costs and add-on projects may we expect?”
Mayor Michael Fournier said that he isn’t sure how this discussion got as far as it did, saying that he thinks some aspects of the petitioned proposal were “questionable.”
“Right out of the gate I had concerns of even pushing this to where we are at today,” he said. “It’s a dead-end street so it’s going to cost folks that are affected by this a tremendous amount of money. ... I am struggling to find the benefit here to the community at large.”
Fournier said that if he was to agree with the petition, he would need to see a “clear majority of folks wanting to change the aesthetics and flow of Mount Vernon.”
Commissioner Brandon Kolo said that because nobody in support of the petition came out to speak at the public hearing, the petition should not move forward.
“No one came out to say, ‘We want this, this would be good,’ to sell it as to why we would do this for the community, so at least to me, this would end tonight. There is no reason to continue to move forward,” he said.
Commissioner Sharlan Douglas voted to approve the paving, saying that the costs of maintaining the roads could be a reason why it should be approved.
“I will say that while our process is to seek approval or a consensus of 50% or more of the people on the street to pave it ... that is not a requirement and there could come a day where we realize that the cost of maintaining these dirt roads over the course of time, not only the cost of maintaining them but the environmental impacts, are such that it would be to our advantage to pave them despite objections to them,” Douglas said.
Alyce Brown, a resident living on Mount Vernon Boulevard, could not attend the meeting on Nov. 11, but has spoken against the project in the last two meetings about it.
Brown said she and her husband adore the home they have together, and said that the aesthetic of the road is a big reason why she settled there.
“We moved here for the ‘country in the city’ feeling. We moved from another home in Royal Oak, and we love the fact that it was an unimproved road. That was the reason we moved here,” she said.
Hearing that the project has come to an end following the vote at the Nov. 11 meeting, Brown was relieved.
“I’m happy for the outcome, obviously, because we were not for it,” she said. “The frontage on our street is the widest frontage on the block; we have almost an acre of lot, so we weren’t happy. Because of that, we would pay the majority if it had been paved.”
Throughout the long process speaking against the project, Brown said she was frustrated that the project continued for so long, but relieved when the outcome was a majority ‘no’ vote.
“It was difficult. It was almost as though the ones who voted that it should go on to the next resolution did not listen to what those of us who showed up had to say,” she said. “I am happy that the mayor was so pragmatic and very sensitive to what we were saying, whereas I felt in the first two meetings that I was at, that some of them acted like they didn’t even listen to us.”