MORGANTOWN — The 2015 passage of Morgantown’s $3 weekly Safe Streets and Safe Community Fee, or user fee, provided a mechanism to fund a prioritized list of paving projects each summer.
Now the city is looking to do something similar with sidewalks.
During a thorough presentation as part of Tuesday’s Morgantown City Council Committee of the Whole session, Staff Engineer Drew Gatlin recommended four initial sidewalk projects to kick off that effort.
The projects included: Connecting the fragmented sidewalk along Monongalia Avenue; the construction of a sidewalk along Richwood Avenue from Jerome Park into Woodburn; a sidewalk connecting Grand Street to Dorsey Avenue, via Ross Street; and a sidewalk along a small section of Oakland Street, near West Everly Street.
“The four projects we’re presenting today are pretty straightforward. They don’t need a massive amount of complicated design. That’s also partially why we chose them and why we think that they’re good, sound investments for this first year,” Gatlin said. “We can actually build these.”
Gatlin recommended the city utilize American Rescue Plan Act funds to cover this initial round of projects, which he estimated at about $1.5 million total.
“I don’t think that you all have the ability to, even at this point, figure out how we’re going to fund 10 years at $1 million per year investment. So I would recommend you identify the most flexible funds you have at your disposal right now and as much of them as possible,” Gatlin said, indicating the city has $2.5 million in ARPA funds that could be used on sidewalk projects. “I think that would be an incredible jump start.”
Gatlin said the city currently has about 75 miles of sidewalks in its network, which is about 34% of its potential.
What happens once the ARPA dollars run out?
Going back to the implementation of the user fee, city leadership has said it would like to focus user fee funds on sidewalks once the ambitious paving projects give way to less rigorous and costly maintenance.
Speaking to council in 2017, City Engineering and Public Works Director Damien Davis noted, “There’s going to be a point where we’re going to have more money to pave than streets to pave.”
