By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Projects have been selected and finalized for this year’s round of Capital Improvement Projects in St. Joseph.
St. Joseph City Manager Bryan Carter says the list of projects was approved by the city council just recently.
"The committee that is kind of promoting the CIP program has started their work, their work is actually well underway, and you'll start seeing the public side of that work in the coming months," Carter tells host of the KFEQ Hotline Barry Birr. "That list includes several of the more high-profile projects."
Carter says two big projects on the list are improvements and expansion at Fire Station 10 in the south end of St. Joseph and at the fire headquarters downtown.
"Both of those stations are the last two stations we have that are the very old, beautiful, cool buildings, but they're not serving some of the modern purposes very well," Carter explains. "They're the last two and they'll either be replaced or be rehabilitated, so those are two of the bigger ticket items."
Carter says there is also a new ladder truck for the fire station on the list of things the CIP money will go towards.
Carter says while the committee does have a list of projects that need done, it's not as simple as just ranking them from most important to least important
"What we actually end up doing is separating out how much revenue we're anticipated to bring in each one of those years and match projects to that revenue," Carter says. "So, first you kind of set up your bucket for each year and then define your projects but there are a number of factors that go into defining when those projects will happen."
Carter says there are several projects that will happen every year, but they also have to decide on those one-time projects and when they happen through the five years of the CIP.
St. Joseph City Council has placed the CIP program on the August 8th ballot. The ballot initiative asked St. Joseph voters to extend the one-half cent sales tax for five more years.