City/owner agreements

I promised to blog a bit about city/owner agreements, and I prefer to keep my promises, but I don't think I understand enough to be very helpful.  City/owner agreements are primarily used to reimburse property owners (in practice, mainly subdivision developers) for costs  incurred at the city's request. The most common case (and one that is on tomorrow night's City Council agenda) is that the city has asked that a street be wider than the minimum 36 feet required (somewhere) for a platted subdivision street.

The idea is that it would not be fair to make the developer pay all the additional cost for a more expensive street.  The best explanation I've found (and it's not a very good one) is by Connie Green in a 2006 KDH article.  According to the article, the city may reimburse the developer for 30% of the additional cost (although I thought the city staff said that the city may reimburse up to 30% of the total cost -- I may have misunderstood).

The KDH article suggests that there is a court ruling requiring the city to enter into these agreements.

I think city/owner agreements are complicated enough to require at least more extensive discussion in tomorrow's 1-hour pre-meeting Council Workshop.  And if any council member feels that more discussion is appropriate, or that public discussion in a formal council meeting would be helpful, I encourage him or her to request removing the item from the Consent Agenda (where it is CA-5b) and lacing it on the main agenda for the meeting.