Grant swap moves street projects forward

TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
The City of Maryville recently completed a deal with the Missouri Department of Transportation that will allow nearly $87,000 in state funds to be transferred from phase-one engineering associated with the proposed South Main retail corridor (pictured) overhaul to the asphalting of a one-mile section of North Main planned for this summer. The agreement means that the multi-million-dollar South Main project will not be subject to what city officials believe would be an excessive amount of state regulation.

One of the most essential skills required for making any level of government work is the ability to horse trade — especially when a public official’s job is to work with some other level of government besides his or her own.

The City of Maryville recently pulled off such a trade that will move two major street improvement projects forward without costing the taxpayers a nickel more than had already been budgeted.

It’s a little complicated, but the end result is that nearly $87,000 in Missouri Department of Transportation funds originally slotted for the multi-million-dollar South Main retail corridor upgrade — a massive project that will take years to complete — will now be shifted toward the asphalting this year of a mile-long section of North Main between the north city limits and 242nd Street.

In turn, an equivalent number of municipal dollars set aside for North Main is being transferred to this year’s $108,000 allotment for engineering along the South Main corridor.

Here’s what happened:

The fiscal 2016 budget included $108,270 for phase-one engineering on South Main by SK Design Group of Overland Park, Kansas. Of that amount, $86,616 was to come from a Surface Transportation Program grant through MoDOT, a funding source generally referred to as STP.

So far so good.

But then the state agency notified Maryville officials that if they used STP funds for even a portion of the South Main redesign, MoDOT policies and regulations would have to be followed throughout the project, a stipulation that would likely have added paperwork, staff time, and dollars to all steps in the process — everything from engineering to land acquisition to construction.

“Due to the anticipated complexity of improvements to South Main Street, it is staff’s belief that the MoDOT process will add too many additional hurdles and delays throughout the life of the project,” City Manager Greg McDanel noted in a written report to the City Council.

It was time to trade horses.

After looking into the problem, McDanel and his staff determined that the portion of North Main scheduled for a new asphalt overlay is listed by MoDOT as a “minor arterial,” a type of roadway that qualifies for STP funding.

So they asked the transportation agency if it would be permissible to shift the $86,000 in question from South Main to North Main and received the go-ahead from Mo-DOT to do so. The icing on the cake is that the North Main project is considered simple maintenance, so no engineering required, and there are far fewer state hoops to jump through.

As for South Main, the city will simply redirect $86,000 of the nearly quarter-million dollars in municipal funds budgeted for the overlay project to the other end of town.

Fiscally, it’s a wash, but a wash that protects the South Main project from what the city sees an unnecessary regulation and allows Maryville to trade its horse and ride it too.