Engineering to begin this year; public meetings, tree removals next year

While a new 1 cent sales tax will take effect in April, City of Powell leaders say the Absaroka Street upgrades that the tax will fund likely won’t wrap up until the fall of 2019.

Park County residents voted in November to raise its sales tax from 4 to 5 percent to fund $13.68 million worth of projects across the county — including $4.25 million to widen Absaroka Street. The tax increase will begin April 1, but City Administrator Zane Logan said it will probably be about July before the city sees any real revenue from the tax.

The Absaroka Street project will begin the engineering phase later this year.

“What we’re planning on doing is letting that revenue build up for about five or six months at least, towards the end of 2017,” Logan said. “At that time, our engineers at Engineering Associates will start working on a design. ... About this time next year, 2018, we will start scheduling public meetings for businesses and residents to get their input.”

Primary construction on the project will take place between Third Street and Seventh Street on Absaroka, though accessory work will likely be required for water flow lines and drainage that tie in between the east and west streets. Work will start at the deepest parts of the water and sewer lines, working up to the storm drainage system.

Logan said the widening of the street won’t make a huge difference aesthetically, but it will be widened as far as the right-away will allow. Typically, residents and business owners are responsible for putting in any new sidewalks in front of their properties, but Logan said that in this case, the city may pick up the lion’s share of that cost.

“This is the first-ever project that’s been funded this way as far as I can remember in Powell,” Logan said. “There may be an opportunity, if the financing allows and depending on the budget, the city may pick up the cost for sidewalks instead of the owners. But that has not been determined yet at this time.”

LED (light emitting diode) street lights will also be installed for better night vision in the area. Logan said he envisions Absaroka as a boulevard to tie in the north end of town and Northwest College to downtown, with safe, well-lighted streets and walkways.

“We’re hoping it creates a kind of pathway for students and residents to downtown,” Logan said. “The engineers and architects will work out all the details, but that’s how we’re envisioning it.”

Logan updated members of the Powell City Council on the tentative schedule at last week’s council meeting. Many residents were under the impression that work on Absaroka would begin right away; Logan reiterated that time is needed to accumulate funding through the sales tax. Improvements to Coulter Avenue, set to begin this summer, are the city’s immediate priority.

“With the Coulter project already scheduled, we weren’t going to tear up two major streets at the same time,” Logan said. “That project will begin this summer and should be complete by late fall. It will work perfectly to transition right into the engineering of the Absaroka project.”

“A year from now, we’ll have the public meetings showcasing conceptual plans and drawings, all the things it takes for a project of this magnitude,” Logan added.

By that time, the city should also have preliminary budget numbers, and know whether funding exists for sidewalks.

Bidding on the project will begin in 2018, with the city removing trees and anything else in the way of construction in the summer of that year.

The city’s Tree Board will also be involved in the process, as roughly 17 to 19 trees now in the right of way will likely have to be removed.

“The Tree Board will then decide what kinds of replacement trees to offer those residents impacted by the removal,” Logan said.

Once that portion of the project is complete, the rest will be bid out to construction companies. Construction would begin, weather permitting, in the spring of 2019, with an eye on a fall 2019 completion date.

“I want this project to be something the citizens of Powell and Park County can see that, if they vote to fund projects like this, this is how we’re going to do it,” Logan said. “We want to do the very best we can, and a project like this that was voted in, we want to make sure it’s done right. We want to get input from the public, because they’re the ones paying for it.”

Street and intersection design will be part of the input portion of the project, with those details to be determined with information from the public meetings.

“We just want to make sure the public knows the project just got folded in, not forgotten about,” Logan said. “It takes a while to build up the funds, and with the Coulter project, it just makes sense to use this schedule.”

The extra 1 cent sales tax will end whenever the $13.68 million is raised.