Minnesota Avenue property owners have had enough.

After a few decades of veering around potholes and traveling a route resembling a gravel obstacle course, the Englewood residents decided to take the situation into their own hands.

This spring, 13 neighbors banded together to form a local improvement district. The LID will pay for paving the street from 14th Street down to Southwest Boulevard.

“The road gets so bad in the summer time, and you can't grade it because the road is so steep,” said Lewis Warnock, one of the main proponents of the LID. “Once it rains, you can grade it and it packs. But people decided it was time to get it done, so we're happy about this.”

Usually, LIDs fund paving of streets, installing sidewalks and curbs or other services that benefit an entire street or neighborhood. The cost of projects is split among the property owners involved, and show up through increased property taxes.

According to Warnock, at first, most of the Minnesota neighbors were in favor of the LID. But when the issue came before the Coos Bay City Council in August, several residents indicated they were unhappy with the significant increase in their property taxes, especially the Knees, a family that owns a tiny parcel of land at the corner of 14th and Minnesota.

The Knees, who don't have to access their property on Minnesota, disputed the need to pay $3,000 more in taxes, while others who use Minnesota exclusively, paid far less.

“It's very scary to me that I could be paying $3,000 more a year in property taxes for the next 10 to 12 years,” Erika Knee said to the council.

The original LID proposal calculated homeowners' increased taxes based on the number of feet of their property that faces the street - causing the taxes of some landowners to increase significantly. However, despite tax increases, other residents are eager to get the show on the road.

“That street has been so bad for so many years, I want it paved,” Warnock said. “I'm willing to pay my share - which is $14,000.”

But after the Knees' objection, councilors said they didn't see frontage alone as a fair formula. The LID was sent back to the drawing board, with property owners working with the Public Works and Development department to recalculate the formula to include both frontage and acreage.

In the beginning, the Al Peirce Company, the largest property owner on Minnesota Avenue, didn't opt to participate in the LID.

A company representative told the council it supported improvements among the community, but wanted to be excluded based on the lack of benefit the company would receive from the paved street. Due to the topography of the Peirce acreage, accessing the land from Minnesota would be very difficult.

But excluding the company didn't seem fair, said Jim Hossley, director of Public Works and Development.

“Because of the size of the Al Peirce company's land, that parcel is about a third of the area that would be affected by the improvements,” he said. Future owners could develop the now-vacant land even though the topography is daunting, Hossley added.

In October, the council revisited the LID issue and, although the tax totals had declined, both the Knees and representatives from the Peirce company disputed their inclusion.

“Based on acreage alone the Knees would pay very little, but their frontage bumped them up,” Hossley said. “Their assessment is no longer as high as the original proposal. But we won't know the true assessment until the project is complete.”

Still, after almost a year of work, and cooperation and disagreements aside, the council approved the improvement district.

Work will begin on the street sometime next year.