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Once the legislative framework has been established by State enabling legislation and enacted into law as a local implementing ordinance, the assessments are administered. In their most simple form, special assessments might be a schedule of one-time fees applied to property owners who want a new sidewalk or hookups to municipal water and sewer pipes. Under other circumstances, the assessments will constitute an annual surcharge to property taxes that may be applied for many years.
As mentioned above, some activities—such as constructing a new sidewalk or connecting a building to the municipal water and sewer pipes—entail simple, one-time fees.
One of the advantages of special assessments is that they piggyback on the existing property tax revenue collection mechanism. This allows a fee to be added to the regular property tax bills of properties that have been defined in legislation as receiving a specific and direct benefit from infrastructure creation or improvement. The billing, collection, and enforcement processes are already in place.
Although special assessments are collected as part of the property tax payment process, the amount of the special assessment fee for each property subject to the fee is deposited into an account dedicated to the funding of the project for which the special assessment was established
