The City’s New Bonding Power
New legislation grants Seattle the authority to issue local improvement bonds, shifting the financial burden of street and sewer projects directly onto benefited property owners.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
House Bill No. 88, relating to internal improvements in cities, has been approved by the governor. It provides that whenever the mayor and council of any city shall cause any street, avenue, or alley to be graded, curbed, or paved, or any sewer to be constructed, they may provide for the payment of the expenses by installments instead of levying the entire tax at one time. They may issue improvement bonds of the district, which shall include the adjoining, contiguous, and approximate property liable to assessment, payable in annual installments over a period of not more than ten years, with interest not exceeding 9 percent. These bonds may be issued directly to the contractor constructing the improvement or sold at par value to pay for the work. The act further establishes that the city shall not be liable for the payment of these bonds, and the holder must look solely to the special assessments collected from the property owners for principal and interest.
“The holder of any bond issued under the authority of this act shall have no claim therefor against the city by which the same is issued, in any event, except from the collections of the special assessment.”
This 1893 legislation established the Local Improvement District (LID) system that remains a cornerstone of Seattle’s infrastructure development today. While it provided a way for a rapidly growing city to build streets without immediate tax spikes, it codified a system where property owners bear the long-term risk and cost of neighborhood development, a source of civic friction that persists in present-day debates over public works funding.
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