The 2022 budget presented at Monday night’s Marysville City Council meeting looked different than the budget presented at last week’s finance committee meeting.
The city budget, presented Monday for public viewing and for first reading by council, has $1.5 million allocated for the city’s paving program.
At last week’s finance committee meeting, the presented 2022 budget included no money for the paving program. City Manager Terry Emery said he had met with several council members over the week that had expressed concern about not funding the program.
Emery said that in years past, the city has not fully funded the paving program as part of the initial annual budget. Once revenue from the previous year is finalized, council makes a decision about how much money should be dedicated to the street paving program and the budget is amended.
Emery cited the 2021 budget, which initially had no money allocated for paving. In January, when it was determined the city carryover would be more than anticipated, council moved $1.5 million to the paving program.
“This council is very interested in making sure the community knows street paving and infrastructure is a priority,” Emery said.
He added, “It always has been. We are just earmarking these funds for paving in the initial stage of the budget.”
Emery also noted that some streets will be paved using other funds. He said some streets will be repaired using state dollars that do not need to come from the city budget. He also explained that some water projects require the pavement to be torn up and the project cost includes laying new streets.
Emery said that when the final 2021 revenue is calculated, council may decide to allocate even more money to the street paving program to “ramp that up even more.”
Finance Director Brad Lutz said the bottom line of the budget, which includes about $29 million in expenses and transfers, is not changed. He said to fund $1.5 million into paving, he needed to move it out of another project’s funding. Lutz said he moved $750,000 from the Eagles parking lot project, $675,000 from the Innovation Park Roadway project and $75,000 from funding to improve and create seating in the Uptown Alley east of Main Street between Fifth and Sixth streets.
Lutz said council sets the priorities, but it is his job to “make sure the numbers balance.”
He said he anticipates all of the projects will eventually get funding, but they do not need the full amount to start the year. He said city council members wanted to fund the paving upfront and will likely restore full funding to the other projects once the city’s final 2021 revenue numbers come in.
“These are projects that will still get done, they will just get pushed back a lot,” Lutz said.
He said the budget initially contained about $1 million for the parking lot project which has three phases — repairing the Town Run; building demolition and site preparation; and paving and creating the parking lot.
He said it is “unrealistic” to believe the entire project will need to be funded in the early part of 2022 and there is “any number of things that could happen at Innovation Park.”
Emery said that in addition to showing council’s commitment to infrastructure, there is a practical reason for getting the money approved as part of the initial budget.
“We try to go to bid on these projects as early as we can because we get good bids when we do that,” Emery said.
The city manager asked council to review the presented budget and be prepared to discuss it in depth at the Nov. 1 council work session and the Nov. 8 City Council meeting.
He told council members to contact him or Lutz if they had questions.
Lutz is projecting a $25.7-million in general fund revenue for 2022. He is projecting the city will go into 2022 with a general fund balance of more than $9.8 million and will close the year with about $6.5 million.
Council member Alan Seymour said the budget and included projects should not be a surprise.
“It is somewhat of a consolidation of many projects that have been discussed throughout the previous year,” Seymour said, adding that “most of the things I am seeing are not new.”
Emery agreed. He said the budget is “following the course” as directed by the recently approved strategic plan.
Council member Henk Berbee said he is pleased to see street paving added to the budget. He said that in 2015, the city had 93 miles of streets. Today, the city has 101 miles. He said it costs about $300,000 per mile to replace uncurbed roadway and about $400,000 to replace a mile of curbed roadway.
City officials have said it costs about $1.6 million annually to repave 4% of the city’s streets. Since 2015, the city has tried to pave about 4% of the city’s streets each year. Officials explain that if the city can create roads that last 25 years and repave 4% of the streets each year, all city streets will be repaved as they approach the end of their life span.
They said the more money that is allocated to the program, the more streets they can repair or replace.
Council member J.R. Rausch said the most recent street evaluation showed about 8% of the city streets were rated as “poor.” He said it wasn’t long ago that the number was 10-15%.
“We have ben chipping away at that,” Rausch said.
Lutz said the hope is to eventually get to the point when just 4% of the streets are rated as poor each year and those will be the streets addressed by the program.