Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Bellevue slashing city services

City has slim hopes for federal stimulus funds


By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

As the city of Bellevue awaits a small share of President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package, essential city services are being slashed in the wake of the recession.

The City Council will hold a special meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m. to review the city budget after realizing a $106,000 revenue shortfall in January, due mainly to a drop in home construction.

The city lost a police officer and had to forego needed fire safety equipment due to the projected revenue shortfall for fiscal year 2009. The city also cut library book purchases and made 8 percent spending cuts across the city's departments to balance the budget.

"We are trying to look into a crystal ball to see how much money the city will have in July," said City Administrator Tom Blanchard, who along with the rest of city staff took a 7 percent cut to his 401k retirement account.

City Council members have cut their own salaries from $200 per month in 2008 to $50 per month for the rest of 2009. Public Works Director George Tanner is researching the amount of money the city could save in its utilities bill by overriding photo-sensitive street lights in the city and setting them to timers to squeeze a little savings out of the twilight hours.

Tonight's meeting will take a look at how the city can get more for its dwindling bucks.

"If we can get a sense out of where our revenue will be, we will go and make the necessary cuts to the budget," Blanchard said.

The city applied for about $4.5 million in stimulus funding to pay for water and sewer system upgrades, street improvements and pedestrian walkways, but Blanchard is not getting his hopes up.

"I am leery that we are going to receive any stimulus funding at all in Bellevue," he said. "Only fully designed and engineered projects with all of their studies complete are getting any funding. It is highly unlikely that we are going to get any of the funding for projects unless we can get the designs completed by June 1."

Last year, the city qualified for a $216,000 federal Safe Routes to School sidewalk construction grant to build pedestrian and bicycle paths from Main Street to Bellevue Elementary School. Now the city needs to pony up $25,000 for engineering work before work can begin.

"If we have insufficient cash flows for the engineering work, we will lose the $216,000 in federal money," Blanchard said.

One project that the city will move forward on soon is repair of a water leak on Chestnut Street. The leak was discovered last fall, as was the fact that a city water main meanders under driveways, garages and gardens between Chestnut and Walnut streets rather than under the alley in the city's right of way, as it should.

Replacing the water line under the alley between Seventh and Eighth streets from Chestnut to Walnut will cost about $72,000.

The city is also looking at extended plans to lay the new water line for several more blocks, at a cost of $420,000, as part of an upgrade to bring enough water pressure to certain parts of the city to fight fires.

That plan will depend on how much the city gets from the federal government.

Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com




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