Progress on major roadwork projects awaits decision on whether to work now and pay later

Next opportunity

The next transit open house is set for 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the auditorium at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt.

Input also may be submitted online at getonthebuslawrence.org.

Cash or bond?

Road-reconstruction projects — ones that would be financed either with cash or through borrowing by selling bonds — expected during the next 10 years in Lawrence, according to the city’s Department of Public Works:

• Bob Billings Parkway: Iowa Street to Crestline Drive, $4.8 million; Crestline to Kasold Drive, $2.8 million.

• Kasold: Clinton Parkway to 31st Street, $6.5 million; Bob Billings to Harvard Road, $4.1 million; Harvard to Sixth Street, $4 million.

• 19th Street: Naismith Drive to Iowa, $3.2 million.

• Wakarusa Drive: Bob Billings to 18th Street, $2.7 million.

Chuck Soules is eager to rebuild a cracked, pockmarked and deteriorating stretch of Kasold Drive, and Lawrence voters overwhelmingly agreed last month to give him the money to get the job done.

Now it’s simply a matter of when to start.

Before deciding when to proceed with the $6.5 million project, which would rebuild Kasold from Clinton Parkway to 31st Street, city leaders first need to decide whether borrowing money against promised tax revenues would be better than waiting for cash to accumulate.

It’s a matter of weighing cost, convenience and other factors that can be commonplace for anyone mulling a major purchase.

“We’re no different,” said Chuck Soules, the city’s director of public works. “Do you buy that big screen TV outright, or finance it and pay for it over the next two years? Or a car — do you save up the money and go buy the car outright, or do you finance it?

“It’s the same thing, the same decision.”

With one major difference: City officials aren’t looking at spending only a couple hundred or a few thousand dollars.

At issue is just how to spend the anticipated $42.7 million officials expect to collect from a special 10-year, 0.3 percent citywide sales tax that takes effect April 1, with the money to finance a variety of infrastructure projects. Leaders already have decided to start work on a Burroughs Creek trail, and to boost street-maintenance work in 2009.

But a timeline for actually rebuilding major roads — a planned list that includes sections of Kasold, Bob Billings Parkway, 19th Street and Wakarusa Drive — has yet to be established.

Plans call for all the roads being rebuilt sometime during the next 10 years, and the schedule likely could be accelerated by borrowing money against future tax revenues, Soules said. But waiting for the cash to accumulate and paying as they go could allow officials to add even more projects to the list.

One thing’s for sure: None of the road reconstruction projects will be in place next year. Simply drawing up plans for the 0.9-mile Kasold project — which would replace the current stretch with two lanes and either a sidewalk or recreational path on each side, plus a landscaped median down the middle — would be expected to take a year, Soules said.

“If we want to build that in 2010, we have to start getting plans together now,” he said. “I’d like to get Kasold started. If we don’t do something pretty quickly, it’ll just get worse and worse. We’ll end up spending a lot to maintain a road that we’re going to rebuild.”

David Corliss, city manager, said that Lawrence city commissioners likely would review financing and scheduling options early next year. The city already is moving ahead with plans, in 2009, for building a Burroughs Creek trail along abandoned rail lines in east Lawrence.

Recommendations for lining up remaining projects will be the subject of detailed analysis during the coming weeks.

“You have to look at how much you’re going to pay in interest costs through debt financing, versus the benefits of getting the improvements in sooner,” Corliss said. “We’ll have to weigh all that, possibly on a case-by-case basis.”