City facing $600,000 shortfall in street maintenance funding this summer

Lawrence shoppers may be coming to the rescue of city streets this summer.

Engineers are alerting city commissioners that they are expecting about a $600,000 shortfall in funding for the city’s summer street maintenance program, which includes work such as repaving and curb repair.

“We are seeing an escalation of construction costs,” said Mark Thiel, the city’s assistant director of public works.

But city officials think they can cover the $600,000 shortfall by pulling money out of the city’s sales tax infrastructure fund, in part because that fund has been growing more rapidly than projected thanks to an uptick in retail sales in the city. For the year, Lawrence’s sales tax collections are up 5.8 percent. In 2014, they were up by about 4 percent.

City commissioners will be asked to approve the $600,000 infusion of cash at their meeting on Tuesday. In addition, the Public Works Department is seeking another $250,000 to fund repaving work for Louisiana Street between 27th Street and the area near the South Lawrence Trafficway that is under construction. The city previously had planned to do that work in 2016, but now believes it would be better to do the construction while that portion of Louisiana Street is closed as part of the SLT project.

The Public Works Department is recommending that the $250,000 in new funding also come out of the infrastructure sales tax fund. Thiel said he thinks the sales tax fund can accommodate the $850,000 in unplanned expenditures without significantly delaying other projects

But whether that holds true may depend on whether future projects planned for the sales tax infrastructure fund also come in above estimates. There already have been signs that some of the planned sales tax projects are coming in above original estimates. Earlier this year, bids for a major stormwater pump station project in North Lawrence came in $1.8 million above engineer’s estimates. City commissioners have since delayed that project, changed its design, and ordered the project rebid in hopes that bids will come in lower. Removing $825,000 from the infrastructure sales tax fund for street maintenance may make it more difficult for the city to cover higher-than-anticipated costs on the pump station project and others.

Higher construction costs are just one issue facing the city’s street maintenance program. As the Journal-World reported in April, the city’s 2015 budget included a significant reduction in funds budgeted for routine street maintenance. In 2015, the city budgeted $2.8 million for its contracted street maintenance program. That’s down from about $4.1 million in the 2014 budget. The $2.8 million mark is roughly equivalent to the amount of money the city was spending on street maintenance in the mid-2000s, prior to the passage of the infrastructure sales tax.

During the 2008 sales tax election, it was envisioned that a large portion of the new tax dollars would go to rebuilding streets that had fallen into disrepair to the point that routine maintenance was no longer effective. The city has spent million of dollars on such projects, including several projects on Kasold, Iowa, Wakarusa and other major streets. But during the 2008 campaign it also was envisioned that spending on routine street maintenance would hold steady or increase slightly.

Thiel said the department routinely identifies $6 million worth of routine street maintenance that needs to be done each year. He said the department works to prioritize which projects should receive the limited funding.

“It would put us behind quite a bit if we cut another $600,000 from that list,” Thiel said.

As for projects up for approval on Tuesday, commissioners are being asked to approve a little more than $1.85 million worth of repaving and curb repair work. Among the areas scheduled to have work done as part of the contract are:

• Seventh Street between Iowa and Indiana streets.

• Multiple one- or two-block sections of streets that branch off from Seventh Street. Those include portions of Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi streets.

• Crestline Drive generally between West Ninth Street and Bob Billings Parkway.

• West 10th Street between Illinois and Mississippi streets.

• Yorkshire Drive between Peterson Road and Princeton Boulevard.

• Curb repair work for Westchester Road between Yorkshire and Kingston Drive.

Commissioners meet at 5:45 p.m. on Tuesday at City Hall.