Naperville’s long-term blueprint for public infrastructure investment calls for more than a third of a billion dollars in spending for the next five years, including work on a North Aurora Road underpass, the City Council heard Monday.
As part of the annual budgeting process, the capital improvement plan, which was reviewed during a council workshop, calls for some $350 million in spending over the next five years with $60 million of it in fiscal 2015-16.
City Manager Doug Krieger noted that the sum for 2016 is “a little below average” in the context of the past decade, when capital projects have run about $65 million each year. He and other city staff said about 72 percent of the planned expenses – which address projects such as engineering work for road upgrades and downtown streetscape improvements to new roofs to automated gear for public responders – have funds identified to cover them. That would leave the city looking for another $16.5 million, and most likely taking out new loans.
Among the items planned for 2016 is additional progress toward improvements to the aging Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway underpass on North Aurora Road. Engineering services manager Bob Kozurek said the city is collaborating with Aurora on covering the shared property purchase and plans to spend $2.35 million for land and engineering work next year. Construction on the underpass overhaul, pegged at around $30 million, is expected to begin in 2019, according to Transportation, Engineering and Development director Bill Novack.
Other items in the upcoming capital spending plan include $435,000 for powered cots and stretchers for the city’s paramedics. Fire Department Chief Mark Puknaitis said the implements, which do the heavy lifting in medical emergencies, would eliminate the shoulder and back injuries that sometimes afflict responders and tend to be very expensive for employers when worker compensation claims are filed. Settling a claim for a shoulder injury, Puknaitis said, sets the department back about $250,000. Lifting injuries, he said, are one of the department’s most predominant on-the-job incidents.
“And a back injury could be over half a million dollars,” he said.
Police Chief Bob Marshall submitted capital funding requests totaling $857,500, part of which will be for technology that would enable text messages to be translated to 911 calls.
“There are certain situations where it’s not safe to be on the phone,” Marshall said, citing domestic violence incidents as one such scenario.
Among the other Police Department capital plans for next year are a high-tech parking management system that allows officers to electronically “chalk” parked cars, track repeat ticket scofflaws and remotely photograph them. The department’s 25-year-old headquarters on Aurora Avenue also needs upgrades to the tune of $280,000, Marshall said, including new centralized and secure storage for ammunition that now is kept in three separate locations in the building; security-boosting renovations to the front lobby, which has no provisions for protecting front desk or records staff; and completion of the department’s cutting-edge defensive tactics and fitness facility. That project received $200,000 in last year’s capital budget and needs $150,000 to complete it, Marshall said.
Upgrades to the city’s IT network, pegged at $2.1 million, are also part of the capital spending proposal, and the Public Works Department is requesting $4.6 million to cover projects that include converting the downtown light fixtures to LED bulbs, replacing and relining portions of the city’s storm sewers, and installing new exhaust systems at the Fire Department’s three oldest stations.
“Those are the problem children we’re having right now,” Public Works Director Dick Dublinski said.
The city-run utilities’ capital projects take up $13.1 million of the planned outlay, much of it for replacing old equipment. Electric director Mark Curran said the transformer at a substation on the Alcatel Lucent property, on the city’s northern edge, failed and will cost $650,000 to replace. Water-wastewater utility director Jim Holzapfel related that a biosolids holding tank is showing significant corrosion after 18 years of service and will need replacing, at $1.2 million. City budgeting policy calls for most of the expense for the utilities’ needs to be funded from revenue that comes from electric and water customers.
The plan also includes $2.4 million for upgrades at the city’s three public library locations, $1.7 million for Riverwalk projects, and $344,000 for Naper Settlement.
City Council members, who have two more budget workshops planned in February and March, will vote on a resolution to fund the capital plan, and borrow the funds not yet secured, at an upcoming meeting. A public hearing in April will precede passage of the 2015-16 budget, which takes effect May 1.
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