Washington continues to debate Streetscape plans

WASHINGTON — City council members all seem to agree that downtown improvements, in some form or another, are needed on the blocks surrounding Washington’s square. Advocates, municipal and otherwise, cite uneven sidewalks, steep steps and malfunctioning fire hydrants as both a public safety risk and an accessibility issue.

“A lot of the time, it’s been approached as a beautification project aside from the water main stuff,” Main Street Washington Director Samantha Meyer said. “While appearances are important … a lot of times, people will go to (stores off the square) and just leave after they’re done. Because it’s not inviting to go from their store to the square, and vice versa.”

But the sticker shock of a nearly $10.5 million estimated price tag and unclear timelines have decision-makers at odds about what improvements would be worth the cost for taxpayers, and how to finance them. For comparison, the sum of all other water main and road projects, scheduled or not, come out to around $11 million.

While city officials have proposed myriad ways to break the project into bite-sized chunks, too much compartmentalization would require inefficient (and more expensive) construction, and risk delays that could see material prices go up.

“You could do more, you could potentially do less, but there is some cost savings with level of scale, so you have to keep those things in mind,” said Steven Soupir, a consultant from FOX Strand.

How the city would pay for an eight-figure project is anyone’s guess, this far out. It may also have to compete with other planned projects: Wellness Park Phase II improvements aren’t expected to have a cost estimate until November, while federally mandated lead water line replacements in the next several years present another question mark for funding.

Meyer said Main Street could potentially line up some grants. McCusker proposed a mechanism called Self-Supported Municipal Improvement Districts, or SSMID, where a petition from downtown building owners could opt the entire area into higher property taxes to help pay for projects like Streetscape.

Council Member Elaine Moore called for assessments on downtown businesses, which she said would get disproportionate benefits from any improvements.

That approach could trade the monetary costs for a political one. Moore acknowledged the unpopularity of assessments, but said they should be the norm given assessments used for other improvements around town, like road, sidewalk and drainage upgrades for East Adams Street in 2022.

"How can I tell private land owners that, ‘We’re going to assess you, but we’re not going to assess business owners,’“ she said. ”Fair is fair, I don’t want anything special for anybody. Nobody is special, everybody is equal.“

Council Member Bethany Glinsmann disagreed. She said the square had wider benefits than individual streets, and that downtown businesses — several of them public advocates for the project — would likely prove willing to chip in voluntarily.

“It’s pretty clear that around the square, that is a public space, so it makes sense that as a community we do not ask the individual property owners directly on the square to contribute, I don’t think that’s inconsistent application of the rules,” she said. “Five percent of our $10 million project is a half-million dollars, I could see downtown business owners being willing to chip in that amount. It’s not like we’re asking them to pony up half the project.”

From the cloud of unanswered questions, the city converged on a few next steps at their meeting last week.

Council members said they’d budget for an engineering plan in fiscal year 2025, for at least some of the streets surrounding the square. Doing so would establish more specific details about the improvements, their costs and their potential timing.

In the meantime, Glinsmann said keeping business owners in the loop would be paramount.

“Regardless of if we decide to do all seven segments or not, I think they want some certainty,” she said. “Some of them are starting to think about doing improvements to their entryways now, so … keeping them in the loop with our plans will help them make decisions.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com