The Palace Rec Center and Pierce Butler East Extension projects are poised to get a shot in the arm, as is a new St. Paul Police training facility and gun range. The news is mixed for a proposed remodel of the Scheffer Recreation Center in Frogtown and the 3rd Street Bridge from Kellogg Boulevard to St. Paul’s East Side, and there’s no money on the table to complete the Charles Avenue Bike Boulevard.
The results are in! (Sort of.)
With painstaking precision and some audible moans of frustration, the city of St. Paul’s Capital Improvement Budget Committee finished wading through and ranking 100 or more funding requests for construction spending projects, from tot lot playgrounds to new bridges and public safety facilities.
It’s a sometimes-maddening process that pits road repair against rec centers against, well, tree guards.
The requests come from everyday people, from neighborhood district councils, from city departments and from the mayor’s office. Led by Paul Sawyer, the 18-member committee wrapped up its major work on Monday by assigning funding to a series of ranked projects.
This is what happens when you don't let the CIB Committee do its job. (This picture was taken in Minneapolis...)
It’s no easy task. The funding pools include $11 million in city bonds, $7.4 million in municipal state aid money for designated roads, and $4 million in federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program money for HUD-backed projects, such as affordable housing and community and economic development initiatives.
That adds up to a little over $22 million to fund what easily exceeds $100 million in proposed projects.
And the process isn’t finished. The rankings now go to the mayor, who will make his capital improvement budget recommendations in mid-August, when he releases the proposed 2016 city budget. Both budgets will then go to the St. Paul City Council for tweaking and finalization by mid-December.
Here’s a taste of what the CIB Committee is proposing in their two-year (2016 and 2017) funding requests, which is somewhat different than the preliminary rankings.
A St. Paul Police classroom, training and storage facility that would come complete with a new gun range would receive $1.8 million over the next two years for design and engineering.
The Palace Rec Center, which is being remodeled and expanded off West Seventh Street, would receive $1.3 million to complete outdoor playgrounds, landscaping and the like. This is the third and final CIB appropriation, which would complete the project.
The Scheffer Rec Center in Frogtown, long-ranked as one of the most outdated facilities in the city rec system, had been in line for $6.8 million in construction funds in 2017. That money was taken off the table, but the committee preserved $1.2 million for design and engineering. City staff said they envision the entire site will be studied, raising possibilities the rec center will be demolished in its entirety and replaced in its entirety when and if construction funding materializes down the road.
The 3rd Street Bridge that connects downtown St. Paul to the city’s East Side would receive $1.8 million in CIB funds, which is half of the $3.6 million that had been requested to complete its redesign. The bridge’s outer lanes have been cordoned off to drivers as a result of a design flaw that dates back to its erection in the 1970s. Committee members said they hoped the city would look to different source than their limited CIB pool to fund the design and bridge replacement.
The second phase of a plan to extend the Pierce Butler Route east so that it connects to Phalen Boulevard would receive $4 million in CIB funds, as well as $7 million in federal matching dollars. The phase in question includes right-of-way street acquisition, design and at least partial construction.
And neither last nor least, Fire Station No. 20 at 2179 University Ave. would receive funds to plan a new building at University and Vandalia.
So what isn’t lined up for CIB funding in 2016+2017? A whole host of things, actually, including some long-awaited traffic studies and road improvements. Not only did the 3rd Street Bridge funding request get cut in half, but $750,000 to fund the remaining traffic circles and improvements along the not-quite-complete Charles Avenue Bike Boulevard was dropped.
In all, the committee spent a good long time debating whether to fund Scheffer Rec Center or the 3rd Street Bridge, among other options, and ended up compromising on both. There was also ample discussion of the mayor’s 8-80 Initiative, which includes the proposed Grand Round and downtown bike loop, among other efforts aimed at making the city more amenable to folks ages 8 and 80 (as well as everyone in between).
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