While Cheney Light Department goals for 2015 might be ambitious, Public Works Director Todd Ableman’s budget reflects more of a hold the line approach to the coming year.
“It’s heavy on operations,” Ableman said. “There’s not a lot of capital in there.”
According to its “Financial and Position Summaries,” Public Works is budgeting for $6,637,300 in revenue and $6,695,400 in expenses in 2015. The $58,100 overage will be made up via contributions from the city’s General Fund, Ableman said, and results from the department absorbing the building and planning duties leftover from the dissolution of the Community Development Department.
Ableman said he had a lot more projects in mind for 2015 than the six listed in the summaries, but decided to prioritize, focusing on maintenance and operations and transportation. With regards to the latter, the department — which includes streets, water, sewer and solid waste along with building and planning — will continue to work on residential street rehabilitation projects, seeking to couple those together with proposed water main replacement work.
City revenues fund the street work, which in 2015 could include repairs to Second Street from H to C streets, North Fifth Street from Oakland to Annie Place, and West Sixth Street from Washington to Union. Cheney has submitted an application to Spokane County for federal Community Development Block Grant funding, revenue that has allowed the city to do over $15 million in infrastructure work since 1998, including water main replacement and rehabilitation of North Sixth Street from the high school to Betz Road this summer.
Ableman said they have $78,000 in federal money for implementation of a street-crossing program along Betz Road and Washington Street next year, with the city picking up the rest of the $88,000 estimated price tag. But the biggest accomplishment Ableman would like to see in 2015 is the beginning of discussions on how the city is going to pay for an infrastructure that is getting older and more used every year.
The City Council approved small water and sewer rate increases earlier this year, what Ableman said was more reflective of keeping up with debt payments than looking ahead.
“That (wastewater treatment) plant out there is 20 years old,” Ableman said. “We did an expansion to it, but we didn’t replace any of the original equipment.”
Ableman said the same is true for the city’s water equipment, which took a “beating” this summer because of an unusually long stretch of temperatures that exceeded 90, and for several days, 100 degrees. To keep up with demand during such stretches, the city runs all of its eight wells, and generally only for about one month.
“We are just now shutting down the majority of our wells,” Ableman said.
The city also took the unusual measure in early August of imposing mandatory outside watering restrictions in order to replenish its four reservoirs, which had been depleted down to a water level of seven feet. The restrictions were also needed because of two wells losing power during the July 23 windstorm and another well being offline for repairs.
Ableman said there are many other issues facing the city’s infrastructure, and a discussion on how to address those before they become critical needs to begin soon.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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