Washington Streetscape plans in limbo after council meeting

WASHINGTON — A work session on capital improvement plans from fiscal years 2024-2028 took up the bulk of a Washington City Council meeting last week. The list of tentatively scheduled projects is diverse, including stoplights on 12th Avenue and Washington street, well-drilling, and pool repairs among dozens of other items.

Some city officials said they worried the to-do list was overambitious. Council Member Elaine Moore said she wanted to push back plans for a long-considered “Streetscape” project that would drastically renovate pedestrian areas of seven downtown blocks, in favor of lead service line replacements, water main repairs and sewer work.

The estimated cost of the work is roughly $10 million.

“With the state cutting our funds so dramatically, and knowing that we have other things that are more pressing,” Moore said. “Do we want a Streetscape? You bet. Do we need it? There are other parts of this town that need it more.”

The project was identified as the top priority of council members at a goal-setting work session in October, but Moore said she took that meeting’s findings with a grain of salt.

“We should have been saying, ‘Oh, so what is important in infrastructure, what is the timing that these projects need to be done or could fail,’ and taken that into consideration before we made our top choices,” she said. “We should have been picking from these problems that absolutely need to be done, before we put a want at the top of our list.”

The line item may prove controversial.

Council Member Bethany Glinsmann said the downtown work, which would include some utility improvements, could be more important than they seemed at first glance.

“As I recall, with the Greiner building fire, the fire hydrant was not pumping water,” she said. “If we replace those lines, under that street, that would improve the pressure of the hydrants in a downtown area. It’s easy to think of the streetscape as just cosmetic, but there is a lot more going on.”

Even if Streetscape work doesn’t begin soon, Glinsmann said the city should aim to narrow in on its plans as soon as possible.

She cited businesses in the downtown area holding off on sidewalk and accessibility improvements, in hopes that the project would cover the work instead.

“I would like to see us move forward on some planning for that, even if we can’t schedule when another project will happen,” she said. “We just have the conceptual plan, which is very high-level … I think the business owners, they want some idea of where we’re heading.”

Glinsmann said the project was also a top priority of Washington’s Great Places Committee, which she and Mayor Pro Tem Millie Youngquist both serve on.

Youngquist said she worried about kicking the can down the road.

“I would like to see us consider dividing it into pieces,” she said. “We can’t do it all in the same year, anyway. And unless we plan for something like this, it will never happen.”

Council Member Illa Earnest said she wanted to bump up priority for drainage improvements at North Second Avenue, where an underpass offers one of the only in-town ways to circumvent trains passing through, but which sometimes floods during rainfall.

The route is likely to grow more important with increasing train traffic projected by 2027, thanks to a recently approved merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railways. Earnest said she would push back Wellness Park improvements — currently set for FY 2025 — to free up the resources.

“It looks like it’s going to be a long-term project, we need to be working on that drainage issue now, get it in the works, get the planning laid out, so that underpass will be available when we need it,” she said.

Council members said they planned to continue holding work sessions on the capital improvement plan before the next budget season begins. The next such discussion is scheduled for June 20.

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