Request By:
J. David Morris
Assistant Director of Law
Department of Law
City of Louisville
Room 200 City Hall
Louisville, Kentucky 40202-2771
Opinion
Opinion By: Chris Gorman, Attorney General; Ross T. Carter, Assistant Attorney General
You have presented the following question to the Attorney General:
May economic improvements as defined in KRS 91.750 be financed through special assessments levied upon benefited property owners as provided in KRS 91.758?
We are uncertain of the precise nature of your question. If you are asking whether the statutes permit the financing of economic improvements through special assessments, the answer is plainly yes since that is exactly what KRS 91.750 to 91.762 is intended to do (see for example KRS 91.750(4): "'Management district' means an area designated by a legislative body pursuant to KRS 91.752 to 91.762, that is to be benefited by economic improvements and subjected to the payment of special assessments for the costs of the economic improvements").
If you are asking whether the statutes authorizing these assessments are constitutional, then we concur with your position that the applicable law is set forth in Louisville Memorial Gardens v. Carpenter, Ky., 261 S.W.2d 627 (1953), in which the court held that special assessments are valid as long as they are used to confer some benefit to the property assessed. We see no reason to dispute the legislative finding that economic improvements can benefit properties in designated management districts.
If you are asking whether the specific assessment mentioned in your letter represents a permissible use of the city's authority, we can of course provide no opinion since we have not been given any of the details regarding the specific economic benefits to be created for the management district.