Burlington’s city council has agreed to salt a state grant with some of the city’s own funds to cover the higher-than anticipated cost of a utility overhaul in the city’s downtown business district.
The council ultimately voted to augment the state’s $10 million outlay with $6.1 million in savings attached to the city’s water and sewer fund in order to foot a contract to replace the aging utility mains that run under the streets inside the business district.
The council approved this funding arrangement on Tuesday after Bob Patterson, the city’s executive director of water resources and engineering, briefed its members on the latest twists in this multi-million-dollar endeavor.
Patterson recalled that the city had initially thought it had the financial means to complete this project in 2021 when North Carolina’s released a new annual budget that included $10 million to switch out the business district’s utility lines. He added that a rough cost estimate from the following year suggested that the city could use these funds to install new water and sewer lines throughout the district’s 16-block area – minus only those mains beneath Webb Avenue and Church Street, which form the zone’s northern and western perimeters. Patterson admitted, however, that this optimistic prediction failed to hold up when the project was finally put out to bid in December.
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Patterson added that the city had originally bid out the project a month earlier – only to scrap the results when the lone submission it received fell short of the state’s statutory requirement for a competitive bid process. The second round of bidding proved more successful – with three companies jockeying for the city’s business. Patterson admitted, however, that the low bid from Jimmy R. Lynch & Sons still called for $13,784,991 to finish the proposed infrastructure improvements.
“Altogether it’s about a $16 million project when you include contingency and engineering fees,” he added, “which is more than our $10 million in funding.”
Patterson said that he and his colleagues ultimately turned to the project’s design team at the firm of WithersRavenel to scale back the project’s scope to fit the state allocation.
“Withers came back and said that we could remove Morehead and Lexington avenues and reduce the cost by about $2 million,” he went on to recall. “We would still be over the funding, and those are also some of the lines that were the highest priorities for replacement.”
Patterson said that, after consulting with the city manager and finance director, he decided to stick to the project’s original scope. He went on to suggest that the council combine the state’s $10 million allotment with $6,122,241 from the water and sewer fund’s capital reserves to cover the contract with Lynch, $1,648,000 in associated design fees, and a contingency of nearly $700,000.
In the end, this recommendation seemed sensible enough to Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler.
“We’ve been putting money away in our water and sewer capital reserves for this very purpose,” the mayor said during Monday’s work session. “We’re just getting a $10 million head start [thanks to the funds from the state].”
The council went on to vote 5-to-0 in favor of the contract with Jimmy R. Lynch & Sons during its next regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday.
In addition to replacing the business district’s water and sewer lines, the council has decided to use the accompanying removal of road pavement to bequeath the business district with a new, more pedestrian friendly street plan.
Once the utility work is complete, the city plans to install pedestrian crossings, remove some existing on-street parking, and widen sidewalks to encourage outdoor dining and other activities. In order to pay for these changes, the city will be able to draw on $5 million that was set aside explicitly for downtown streetscaping in one of two multimillion-dollar bond packages that Burlington’s voters approved in November.
