City Council looks at projects, budget

The City Hall projects are many, the dollars aren't.

Casey Drew, the city's finance director, presented the City Council Tuesday night with a request for $124 million in capital improvement projects for which the council would have to sell bond debt in the fiscal year beginning July 1 to pay for them.

The total includes $44.5 million for flood-recovery related projects, of which $32 million would go, in part, to pay the city's portion of costs over and above what the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay to upgrade some of the city's key flood-damaged buildings.

The $124-million total also includes about $80 million for capital improvement projects not related to the June 2008 flood. Of that, $39.1 million of the request is for public works projects like streets, bridges, storm sewer and trails and $24 million is for recreational and riverfront improvements. Those include a first installment of $20 million for a $60-plus-million Multigenerational Life Center - the city's funding of which would need to be approved by voters, council members suspected - and about $2 million for the first of two installments for an outdoor riverfront amphitheater and an outdoor ice rink and water fountain on May's Island.

Only some fraction of the project requests - as is the case every year - will be approved in the next budget, council members Kris Gulick, Chuck Swore, Don Karr and Mayor Ron Corbett noted after last night's budget meeting.

The council must adopt a budget for the next fiscal year and submit it to the state by March 15.

Among some of the notable revelations in last night's budget talks:

• The city does not need to include a $50,000 payment to the Economic Planning and Redevelopment Corp. - a private-sector flood-recovery initiative - because the entity is “scaling back” its work, Corbett reported last night.

• The city will no longer use flood-recovery consultant John Levy after June 30, 2010. Levy gained some notice in 2008 when his company charged the city $475 an hour for his services. In October 2008, Levy created his own firm, Base Tactical Disaster Recovery, and won a new city contract that paid him $225 an hour.

• The budget proposal calls for adding three custodian/maintenance workers if the city takes over the old federal courthouse in the upcoming fiscal year rather than waiting until the new federal courthouse opens in 2012. After last night's meeting, City Manager Jim Prosser said the three positions are in the budget in case the council decides to put some city offices in the building. Mayor Corbett has said he wants to return city government to the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building and that he supports also putting some city offices in the old federal courthouse nearby if the space is needed.