Dover council approves $16.1M CIP
Some projects pushed back to address needed culvert replacement
DOVER — The Dover City Council unanimously passed an amended six-year capital improvements program budget that pushed back some projects to fund a needed stormwater culvert replacement under the railroad that cost more than $1.5 million than estimated.
The council also amended the CIP appropriation that authorized bonding for the next fiscal year; however, since the level of bonding has changed, it was referred to a public hearing at its next council meeting.
The CIP plans for $16.1 million in projects in fiscal year 2020 with a total of $111.4 million over the next six years.
The council will also seek to debt finance $10.9 million of the projects in FY 2020, which is $5.6 million less what City Manager Michael Joyal had submitted to the council in early October. The decline is attributed to some of the projects being pushed back a few years, such as the Court, Union and Middle streets reconstruction project and the congestion mitigation project for Route 108.
The juggling of projects allows Joyal to rejigger funding to pay for the $4.9 million Broadway culvert replacement, which the city budgeted $3.3 million for the job. However, Joyal previously cited the increasing cost of steel from the tariffs imposed this year for the dramatic increased cost of the project.
City officials have long sought to install a new drainage culvert underneath the railroad by Red’s Shoe Barn on Broadway to alleviate the reoccurring flooding issues around the store and the surrounding neighborhoods. The job is to push through an 84-inch pipe under the railroad to replace the granite box culvert built at the time of the railroad, which has partially collapsed and created a chokepoint for stormwater during rain events.
Joyal said last week at a CIP workshop that the budget shuffle does not make any “significant change” to the financial impact of amended CIP as compared to the original one. He said the new CIP also maintains the informal budgeting guidelines of not taking on more debt than what is being retired in a given year.