The town of Signal Mountain has received grants to help build multiple sidewalks and bike paths including sidewalks in the Olde Town neighborhood. At the council meeting on Monday, Loretta Hopper, public works director, gave an update on that project. She and Town Manager Boyd Veal explained the “hoops that you have to jump through that are associated with getting grant money.”
An amended contract with the state of Tennessee was received in November, she said, which will extend the finish date until March 2023.
Plus, she said it will be paid for by combining three grants. These include the grant for the Olde Town sidewalks, another that had been received for building a bike/pedestrian path along Taft Highway and one for installing sidewalks around the town hall. The Taft Highway and town hall projects were both approved by TDOT, but by the time the town got confirmation that the funds were approved, the actual costs had increased to much more than the original estimates, so those projects have been put on hold and that money is being rolled over to the Olde Town sidewalks.
These grants are from federal money that is administered through the state, said Mr. Veal. This grant money comes with many requirements such as getting TDOT approval for each step of the engineering, design and construction of the project and an engineer being on site at all times. Each step adds to the time it takes to complete a project and adds to the cost. Additionally, in the time it takes to finish the work, costs are continually increasing.
Town Manager Veal said that engineers have been working on the Olde Town sidewalks since before 2016, and just recently he received a change order to their contract because the scope of the work has changed. The town has not added any work, he said, but the additional work is because of new requirements from TDOT that have been made during the time that has elapsed. This has increased the engineer’s workload from 309 to 786 hours, more than doubling their time. Mr. Veal said he is in negotiations regarding the change order.
Engineers had given approval to proceed with the design phase for the sidewalks in March this year, then the COVID-19 pandemic closed down all work. Design work has now restarted and now right-of-way and construction easement plans have to be submitted and approved by TDOT.
The grant money that will be used to build these sidewalks is an 80/20 percent split, with the town receiving just under $1.2 million that the grant will pay. Signal Mountain will be responsible for the 20 percent, amounting to $500,000-$600,000 and any other costs above that. This will build about 20,000 linear feet of sidewalks, said Ms. Hopper.
Councilman Dan Landrum told the council that he was not convinced that using grants for projects such as this will be the best thing to do going forward. He said if grants are not used, there are less restrictions and conditions, although all ADA (Americans with disabilities) requirements must still be met. He also suggested doing regular maintenance on existing sidewalks and replacing portions as they are needed to make it more manageable.
The public works director said that the town has never had a separate fund for sidewalks, so she wondered where money would come from if not from grants, although they make the cost of building them increase. Council Member Andrew Gardner suggested the possibility of a public private partnership by fundraising to pay for projects like this that people are passionate about.
Vice Mayor Susannah Murdock proposed that the town create a long-range plan of projects that the council would like to complete such as sidewalks that would be placed to benefit the most people and the possibility of connecting the town of Signal Mountain with sidewalks and paths being considered by the town of Walden.
Also discussed was the role that a council member should play in their appointment as a liaison to various boards. Mayor Charles Poss said that the council makes appointments of citizens to the boards and asks them to do the work. He said the council member/liaison does not need to participate. He said that he sees the position as a line of communication. Council member Landrum would like for the liaison on certain boards, that he referred to a working board, to be able to participate by representing the council. This will be discussed more in-depth at the next meeting.
Councilman Landrum also asked that a report be presented at the council meetings about what citizens ask for in open records requests to find out what citizens want to know. Mayor Poss recommended that the town manager, instead, tell the council during his report, only if he sees a trend in concerns from residents, rather than a report at each meeting. “Thanks for bringing that up, but we don’t need an outline every time, but Mr. Veal could let us know if a hot topic is being requested,” said the mayor.
“I’ll just do my own open records requests as a citizen,” said Councilman Landrum, who added that he also would like to see police reports and court cases.