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LEIF ENGER: It's not a city like you think of a city or even think of a small town. The 150 residents of Island View mostly live on the shore of rainy lake. There's no business district, no city water, or sewer.

Most people work 10 miles west of here in International Falls. There's no main street in Island View either, but there are roads branching off State Highway 11 toward the lake, gravel roads. Roads are the issue.

SPEAKER 1: The residents of Island View or when it comes to a residential and commercial property are the highest taxed people in Koochiching County, and we've got the worst roads.

LEIF ENGER: Resorter Mike Williams is Island View's mayor, a job he doesn't want to give up. Still, he says, these gravel roads are more like trails unsafe and hard on cars. He says there's no way the city with so few residents can afford the half million dollars it would cost to pave them. If the city were dissolved though, those roads would revert to the county, and the county holds the blacktop.

SPEAKER 1: We just don't have the tax base, the number of people, and the budget to fix those roads. The county has the means to do it. Whether they will do it or not remains to be seen.

LEIF ENGER: That, Williams says, is the chance the people of island view are about to take. Soon, most likely this summer, there will be a referendum. If the majority votes to dissolve, the city will have six months to wrap itself up. Then the green sign comes down, and residents begin what could be a long wait for smooth tar. Tom Riley recently led a petition drive for dissolution.

TOM RILEY: We didn't have a single refusal. There are roads in this county that are blacktopped that literally go nowhere. And here we are with nice homes and with school buses coming in and out traveling on roads that are at times almost impassable.

[CLATTERING]

LEIF ENGER: We're going to take a little ride now. We're with the county engineer Doug Grindall And he's going to show us the streets of Island View.

DOUG GRINDALL: The county hates to even plow a lot of these roads. Come along with the wing and hit those rocks, you can take the wing right off.

LEIF ENGER: This is Gold Shores Road we're driving on now, 2.2 miles through thick pines and bedrock so narrow in places, Grindall says, "You get pretty religious topping the steeper hills."

DOUG GRINDALL: I remember the vehicle that I drove when I first came up here for the county vehicle, it was a 72 Ford, had very long hood. And I remember some of these hills I couldn't quite see which way to turn the wheel when I'd come up over them. Well, you can see it right there.

LEIF ENGER: Most of the 100 or so people who live on Gold Shores Road will probably vote to dissolve the city and wait for the county road crews. The irony, Grindall says, is that this landscape is so rocky and uneven, the city may give up its charter in vain.

DOUG GRINDALL: We can probably move a yard of dirt for under $2 a yard into blast a yard of rock. You're going to be looking at depending upon the quantity involved anywheres between, oh, say, 20 to $100 a cubic yard. So look at the cost differential.

LEIF ENGER: You seem to be saying that the residents of Island View don't have a much better chance of getting blacktop whether or not they dissolve the city.

DOUG GRINDALL: That's strictly my opinion, but I can't imagine it happening.

LEIF ENGER: That will be for the county board to decide, of course, but the budget is limited. Grindall says less than $100,000 will be spent this year on new blacktop countywide. That amount wouldn't cover half of Gold Shores Road. Still Island View residents say a remote chance at better roads is better than no chance, which is what they have now.

At the League of Minnesota Cities Assistant Research Director Jeanette Bock says, "In the state's current budget crunch, it wouldn't be surprising to see more small cities try to get services by joining the larger tax base of their counties."

JEANETTE BOCK: It'll just be interesting to see what happens during the next few years because there is such a conflict now with state aids to local government that maybe many more of these smaller cities really will be considering the step that Island View is taking.

LEIF ENGER: The state municipal board has scheduled a meeting in Island View for April 3. There it's expected to set a date for the referendum on dissolution. The city was established right after the repeal of prohibition so that local resorts could get liquor licenses. But as cities are born of such practical needs, so, say the people of Island View, do cities die. This is Leif Enger.