The Cookeville City Council voted Thursday night to abandon an eight-year-old multimodal sidewalk grant from T-DOT originally intended to fund new sidewalks along Willow Avenue and West 12th Street.
The grant is worth an estimated $907,000 that would have required the city to provide a five percent match, or an estimated $47,800 for the first phase of the project. City Manager James Mills said planned improvements to 12th Street are why the city is abandoning the grant.
“We just didn’t want to go ahead with this project, and then two or three years from now, go dig up everything that was done through this,” Mills said. “So it would have been a waste of taxpayer dollars to proceed with this.”
Mills said the city is exploring a streetscape project along West 12th Street in conjunction with Tennessee Tech that would include enhanced pedestrian crossing and sidewalks for students. Though the city will lose the grant, Mills said the city still plans to complete the project in the future.
“I don’t want the public to get the impression that we have abandoned the idea of putting sidewalks in here,” Mills said. “We know that it’s extremely needed, especially with the amount of students there.”
Community Development Director Jon Ward said the project would have installed sidewalks on North Willow Avenue to West Jere Whitson Road, to West 12th Street, and West 12th Street East to approximately Virginia Avenue. Ward also said sidewalks would then be extended to reach North Dixie Avenue. Mills said the city hopes to receive grant funding for the project in the future.
“We’ll go back to T-DOT in the future if we end up coming to some agreement with the university and the council wants to complete a project on 12th (street),” Mills said. “We will surely explore every option we have to get funding to help pay for it.”
Ward said the grant would have been used to complete the southern portion of the project, with the northern portion to be completed in a future phase.
In other business, the council approvedto purchase traffic controllers and monitors for the Public Works Department. The council also awarded bids for asphalt mix, semi-annual paving, and milling.
The council rejected a bid for semi-annual mineral aggregate services. Mills said the city only received one bid and would like to see more competitive bids. The city will rebid the services.
Council approved a second change order for the Water Treatment Plant Generator Construction Project. Water Director Barry Turner said the order adds some items that should have been included to start with, while removing some allowance items. Turner said the total change order will cost the city an estimated $22,434.
The council then approved an amendment to the engineering services agreement for the design and construction management of standby power at the Cookeville Water Plant. Turner said the engineer needs more time so the inspector can have some more time, along with the approved change order. Turner said this will add $16,000.
Turner said that both the change order and the amendment are covered through a grant and that the city will only have to pay five percent of that cost.