Well, it looks like there will be another meeting to discuss the Capital Improvements Plan before the Planning Commission will vote on it. Remember that the Town Council votes to approve or disapprove while the Planning Commission merely issues a vote on whether or not the capital improvements included are consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. However, there have been about $1,500,000 in changes already.
The interesting part occurred at the beginning of the meeting. Having arrived a bit early, I made sure to get a copy of the documents being presented to the Planning Commission. Included were the expenses for capital outlays parts of which are used by the Planning Commission evaluate Capital Improvements. Just before the meeting, the Planning Director arrived and passed out some additional documents. Among these documents was a second copy of these expenses for capital outlay. The first one was dated 5/3/10 and the second one dated 5/21/10. (Use the links on the dates to see the documents.
A quick look showed me that 3 major categories were displayed: 1. Equipment
2. Construction and 3. Community Support. Here is a comparison of the totals of the two documents:
5/3/10: Equipment Total $317,500
5/21/10: Equipment Total $317,500
5/3/10: Construction Total $2,459,300
5/21/10: Construction Total $903,300
5/3/10: Community Service $689,503
5/21/10: Community Service $689,503
Those numbers pretty much narrowed down the area of what I needed to look for in order to see exactly what had been cut from the budget since the Public Hearing.
Doing a page by page comparison with the two dated documents, here are the changes that I found.
- CUT – p. 1 Fire Dept, New Driveway Light Heads were cut saving $9,000.
- CUT – p. 4 FBCP Waterline Extension $1,600,000 (Falling Branch Corporate Park….I thought this was required due to new company moving in but according to the Town, they felt that it could be postponed for another year or so.)
- ADDED – p. 4 East end water improvement survey $40,000. (Hmmm….would that involve water that would have been going to the FBCP Waterline Extension?)
- ADDED – p. 4 $4,000 more to the FY 09-10 Rollover for Sanitary Sewer Projects. (Another Hmmm…gotta look back at the information I have on those projects…..the devil is in the details and of course no such details were know in previous budgets…so I will have to review audio/video recordings and minutes of meetings to see what need to be put back in bundle. Looking at the 09-10 Budget under Sewer Capital Construction: there was $34,000 for Rosehill DR, $20,500 for FBCP Extension, $6,000 for Long St, $14,000 for Orchard St, and upgrades to Kiwanis park were deleted from that budget. Guess those could be places to start.)
It is clear that changes have been made and that the “goes out” was reduced quite a chunk. Now it will be interesting to look and see what else happens and what these numbers really mean. Lots of questions here. Maybe some of you readers have some ideas?
