Another year means the introduction of an updated paving program for the streets of Marysville.
Officials presented the city’s finance committee Thursday with a request for more funding to help with this year’s paving project.
The city currently has about $500,000 budgeted for paving this year. Public Service Director Mike Andrako said that’s generally the amount budgeted for roads, with the city knowing it generally comes back to committee at the beginning of the year to ask for more. The city’s goal every year is to spend $1.5 million for the program, which usually paves about four percent of Marysville streets.
Andrako has already asked the committee for another $900,000, on top of the budgeted $500,000, to restore seven more streets, as well as the streets affected by the recent water line improvement project. The $500,000 would come from the city’s general fund, while the remainder would come from one of the city’s water funds.
Adding $100,000 already budgeted for paving related to water line repairs, that would bring the total paving program budget to $1.5 million.
Officials acknowledged that having to transfer money from water fund isn’t ideal, but they said the situation calls for it.
“I think because of the condition of these roads around the court house and city hall, because of the degradation from the trenches, I think it’s appropriate and fair to allocate water capital monies to repave those,” said City Finance Director Justin Nahvi.
Nahvi also said using money from the water fund will allow the city to accomplish its normal paving program without having to compromise on funding.
There are currently three water funds the city has. They will go toward a new water facility, according to Nahvi. He said there’s more than $24 million between all three, enough that pulling out $400,000 would not harm them significantly.
“I still think there’s sufficient money to do this one-time paving project,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is what it is.”
Committee Chair Henk Berbee said he wanted to make sure the water funds weren’t going to end up going to other projects if not used for paving. He noted council is generally wary of handing out money from the city’s water fund.
“Those enterprise funds, we’re very protective of those,” Berbee said.
Andrako said if any of the water money goes unused, it will revert back to its original fund.
City Council member Tracy Richardson was in attendance, and asked Andrako why the city didn’t have this funding in place already if it knew the water line work would need to be repaired. Andrako replied the city already had funding for the repair of the trenches but hadn’t allocated anything for repaving the roads completely.
City Manager Terry Emery said the residents in the area affected by the water line project deserve to have their streets repaved. He said that way, those residents likely won’t have to worry about similar road work for 20 to 25 years.
“It’s been a nightmare, no doubt,” replied Richardson.
The city will have the plan outlining the specific streets to be paved at the next Public Service Committee meeting later this month.