City leaders have delayed a plan to redirect $670,000 from state funding for flood mitigation work at Flora Street toward to the cost of replacing the Rivershore Road bridge.
The move comes after a City Council discussion earlier this month about the possibility of completing both construction projects with money already on hand.
Council voted July 8 to hold off on making a request to the state to reallocate $670,000 in grant money from the Flora and Riverside Avenue project toward completing the bridge replacement. Council’s vote followed a discussion prompted by 1st Ward Councilman Joe Peel, who said he had spoken to an engineer with the N.C. Department of Transportation about the cost of the bridge replacement project.
Peel said he had received an email from Randy Midgett, a construction engineer with the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Edenton office. According to Peel, Midgett contacted him after reading a news article about the city’s decision in late June to ask the state to reallocate $670,000 from the Flora Street project to the bridge replacement.
Peel said Midgett suggested that perhaps the bridge work could be completed at a cheaper cost than the $2.5 million that the city has budgeted. After about a 15-minute discussion, council voted to delay reallocating the $670,000 until city staff can speak with officials from NCDOT and the city’s on-call engineering firm AECOM ahead of council’s July 29 meeting.
The city has been awarded two separate N.C. Emergency Management grants to help cover the costs of the bridge replacement and the flood mitigation work at Flora and Riverside. That grant for the bridge work was for $1.97 million and came from NCEM’s Transportation Infrastructure Resiliency Fund.
Last spring, the T.A. Loving Company of Goldsboro submitted the lowest of two bids to replace the bridge. Loving’s bid was $2.43 million, which is nearly $500,000 more than the grant awarded by NCEM.
In June, the NCEM announced that Elizabeth City had been selected to receive $820,000 in 2023 Disaster Relief and Mitigation Funds. The money was designated for improvements at Flora and Riverside, which for years has seen ongoing flooding caused by storms and high winds.
Council hopes to learn before July 29 whether a change in the design of the new bridge will make it possible to finance both projects with the original grants each was awarded.
At the city’s June 24 meeting, council voted to redirect $670,000 from the Flora Street project to replacing the Rivershore Road bridge. Council agreed to ask the state to approve the reallocation following recommendations by Jon Hawley, the city’s grants administrator, and Dwan Bell, the city’s public works director.
Peel and 2nd Ward Councilor Rose Whitehurst each said they had received calls from residents concerned that the Flora Street project will take even longer to complete after funds are shifted to the bridge project.
Despite the reallocation, the bridge replacement would still be about $400,000 short of what’s needed to complete the work, Hawley pointed out. He said the remainder of the cost could be covered with money remaining in the city’s Powell Bill balance, which according to city documents is about $650,000. The Powell Bill is funding North Carolina municipalities receive each year from the state that is designated for street improvement projects.
In May, Bell reported to council that another $1 million, in addition to the $1.97 million, would be needed to complete the bridge project. The city already has accounted for about $611,000 of the grant that was used for pre-construction work. The remaining amount — roughly $1.3 million — plus the extra $1 million are what is needed to complete the project.
The closed Rivershore Road bridge is essentially a concrete slab sitting atop two metal culverts. But flooding and erosion around the two-lane, 12-foot-long bridge that was built more than 30 years ago has taken its toll, forcing the city to close the span in spring 2022.
Local News
Comments / 0