Agenda 09/26/2000 - Laserfiche WebLink

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THURSDAY. JUNE 1~ 2000 sets their program. He stated that greater State support of the City's program was needed, and that such a comparison might lead to effective legislative initiatives to accomplish improvement in the next General Assembly. Otherwise, Mr. Teague suggested, the City might continue to carry an unfair share of cost for such work. Mr. Reynolds agreed, stating that the City would be spending $100,000 more on local street paving work than the state would provide in the coming year, and that even with this level of supplement the City was losing ground by virtue of such small increments in State funding increases as had been seen in recent years. The Vice-Mayor asked what related areas of work were not benefiting from the use of street maintenance funds and was told that additional needed paving, traffic signals, infrastructure improvements and other items were not eligible for use of stated funds. Mr. Towamicki stated that the state had become much strict and specific in what qualified for the use of state funds, and that things like vehicle maintenance costs related to the work had to be calculated carefully using hourly rental rates provided by VDOT. He went on to say that it was much easier to use VDOT's rate schedule rather than attempt to calculate their own. Council Member Teague summarized by stating that the City would be spending slightly more that $2 million on street paving in the coming fiscal year, but would expect to get only about $1.8 million back from the state in reimbursement, and Mr. Towamicki agreed that this was correct. Vice-Mayor Teagne asked if some costs of our engineering activities were also charged off to these funds, and was told that they were. Mr. Towamicki stated that a number of eligible costs of city activities, such as street cleaning, were charged of in whole or in part to state funding, and that very careful records were kept on these issues. Vice-Mayor Teague stated that the city should calculate all legitimate needs in street maintenance and ask the legislature to fund the entire cost, saying that the cycle of reimbursement should be reversed by calculating actual need and implementing rates that would result in reimbursement of actual costs. Mr. Reynolds agreed, stating that it might be effective to pursue this goal through the city's involvement in Virginia Municipal League committee activity. Mayor Crabtree suggested that it would also be a good idea to inform Mike Amyx, Executive Director of the