Zack Thorington

The City of Powell is considering how it will spend $1.1 million in funding left over from an overhaul of Absaroka Street.

The project — which widened the road and replaced water and sewer lines underneath — was paid for with a 1% specific purpose sales tax. Park County voters approved a $13.68 million tax in 2016 for various projects around the county, including $4.25 million for Absaroka Street.

However, since there was some lag time between the time the tax was collected and when officials could notify vendors to stop collecting it, the tax raised more than $14.71 million. Powell wound up receiving more than $324,000 extra for the project, while the work itself wound up coming in $617,000 under budget. That left the city with $1.1 million left over.

By law, that money must go toward maintaining the project approved by voters. However, Powell City Administrator Zack Thorington said it would take 20 years to spend all the money just on maintenance of Absaroka Street. 

At the Powell City Council’s Feb. 1 meeting, Thorington proposed using some of the money for slurry seal projects throughout the city; the coating protects the road and extends its life, ultimately saving money over time on rebuilding roads.

In order to reallocate the excess tax funds, the city is required to advertise its intention for 30 days and hold a public hearing. Then the council would have to pass a resolution approving the reallocation of the funds. Before using a lot of the city’s time toward the proposal, Thorington wanted to know if the council would consider the idea. 

Ideally, he said, the city does slurry seal treatments on city streets about once every five years. With budgets getting tighter, the city has fallen to a schedule of once every eight to 10 years. 

“It does get harder to balance the budget when you have big projects like that,” Thorington said. 

He added it would be best to use the funds for maintaining what the city has, as opposed to building anything new, which would require future funds to maintain. Since the voters turned down a 1% general purpose sales tax in the 2020 election, he said there wouldn’t be any general funds to maintain new projects.

Using the Absaroka funds for street maintenance, Thorington said, also keeps the dollars in line with what voters approved when they supported the 1-cent specific use tax in 2016.

“The voters voted on a street,” Thorington said. 

He said the city does the slurry treatments in sections of the city each year, at the cost of about $300,000 to $400,000 per year. 

Thorington proposed using $800,000 of the $1.1 million in excess Absaroka funding toward slurry seal, and then leaving the rest for improvement and maintenance of Absaroka. Among the projects the money would cover is curb and gutter north of Seventh Street. 

Councilor Geoff Hovivian asked about repairing sunken manholes, saying he has a few on his street that are “suspension killers.” 

Thorington explained that lifting manholes is something that can be covered by the city’s water enterprise fund, which is supported by charges for water service.

Councilor Steve Lensegrav expressed concern that the city would get comfortable with the slurry sealing not coming from the general funds — and then when the Absaroka funding dried up, they’d have a budgetary strain to deal with. Lensegrav asked why the city couldn’t use the Absaroka funding as needed to close budgetary shortfalls. 

Thorington said that would require the city to go through the entire lengthy process every time it wanted to use the sales tax dollars for slurry sealing. So, he said, it would be better to approve the funding all at once with one process.

The councilors didn’t take any action in the matter, saying only that they’d be open to considering the resolution if it came before them. With that, Thorington said he’d begin putting together all the documentation and other requirements needed before a resolution can be put forth to the council.