2025 Budget
It's the city's annual budget time again. During our last council meeting, we passed the 2025 tentative budget, and we'll have a public hearing on the budget at the beginning of our next meeting on August 22nd. After the hearing, the council will discuss and then vote on the budget.
If you'd like to see a copy of the tentative budget, please drop in city hall for a copy. It can be interesting to see all of the budget details. Even for a small city like Sugar, the budget is fairly complex. I've spent a long time looking over the budget proposal submitted by the mayor and his staff. I think it represents a good balance between planning for the future and responsibly using the public's money to maintain the city as we should.
One item that caught my attention in this year's budget was the capital fund for roads. The mayor proposed (and I agree with his point) that we need to be saving more money for future road projects. We have relatively decent roads in Sugar. However, there is only so much we can do to keep them in good shape as the years go by. At some point in the future, we will have some big expenses to cover as we'll need to replace worn out roads. It's wise to be setting aside enough to maintain and replace the roads as we need to.
Overall, the budget shows the city is sound in our current financial situation. We do have some very big expenses on the near horizon as I'll explain below.
Sewer Projects
We have three major sewer projects upcoming. I'll briefly summarize them here.
First: Rexburg Conveyance
The sewer lines we have running from Sugar City into Rexburg are concrete and were installed in 1982, which means they are over 40 years old now. They are long past their expected usability. Rexburg is spearheading a project to install a new pipeline along Railroad Ave and constructing a new pump station and pressure line. The timeline is still a bit vague, but the work is supposed to begin this year.
Our portion of pipe for this particular project is the line that runs from Moody Rd. to Rexburg. We have to pay our proportional share of the cost for the new line and pump station. After all is said and done this will probably cost the city somewhere in the range of $6-700,000. And this is after including $1.7 million from a grant source.
Second: Sugar Interceptor Rehabilitation
We have to reline the sewer line running from Mayor's Park to Moody Rd. This line is 40+ year-old concrete as well, and is showing signs of failing. In fact, most residents aren't aware, but a portion of this line did fail last year. The city was able to quickly go in and replace the small portion of the line at that time.
This project will reline the existing concrete pipe with an interior epoxy/PVC liner. The smooth interior surface will slightly increase the 12' line capacity and the epoxy liner restores and increases the pipeline strength. This will be a solution that should last many years.
The timeline for this project is a bit blurry as well, but barring any serious issues, we expect to begin on this project in the next 2-4 years. The city's portion of this project's cost is estimated to be about $350-400,000. As the years go by, the cost will undoubtedly go up.
Third: North Interchange Connection
The final project in this list is a sewer connection from the Salem/North Rexburg interchange area to the Rexburg sewer treatment system.
In the past couple of years, a number of property owners in this area have requested annexation into Sugar City. It's quite possible additional property owners will follow suite. Also, as you are probably aware, residents in Salem recently overwhelmingly requested to be included in Sugar City's impact area. Eventually, as that area and the surrounding areas experience additional growth and development, those in the city's impact area will probably be annexed into Sugar City.
We were very glad when property owners near the interchange requested to be annexed into Sugar City. With the new LDS temple and other growth happening in Rexburg on the south side of Hwy 20, we expect similar commercial and mixed-use development to occur in Salem/Sugar City on the north side, particularly in the property that has already been annexed.
The commercial development of those areas would be a benefit to Sugar City, providing some needed new businesses and possible entertainment and housing options. The addition to and diversification of our tax base would benefit the city and the school district as well.
This new interchange connection for sewer service would also be designed to serve any additional needs from Salem in the future.
There are a number of possible options for the design of this line, which still needs to be decided upon. As for the cost, it will probably run in the neighborhood of $2 million.
Projects' Funding
Several years ago, the city council increased the sewer base rate and usage fees. Understandably, many residents were not happy. I voted to approve the increase. It was the prudent thing to do. The city has certain things it has to do, and roads, water, and sewer management are top of the list. By the way, money the city collects for water and sewer cannot be spent on anything else.
I suppose it could be great if I could brag that all the years I was on the city council I never voted to raise utility or other fees. But I think it would be better to be able to brag about being on the city council when some major projects had to be done, and the city had the cash reserves to simply pay for the projects up front.
We have been building a reserve for the past few years, but, as it stands, our reserves for sewer capital projects isn't enough to cover all three projects. So we're currently considering and debating our funding options.
There are a number of possible options:
- Different types of low-interest loans (i.e. bonds) (through Rural Development or DEQ)
- Grants (Community Development Block Grants that could help pay for a portion of the projects if we qualified)
- Congressional Appropriation funding/grants ("pork projects")
- City cash reserves
- and one or two other possibilities we're exploring
I imagine, we'll settle on a combination of some of these options. More info to come.
These are big, necessary, and exciting city projects. The mayor and city staff will make their recommendations and the city council will vote to move forward as we need to in the coming months and years.
If I'm still on the council as all of these projects go forward, I'll try to keep residents up to date. And, of course, you can attend council meetings and stop in city hall for additional information. And the mayor, city staff, and council members are always interested in hearing from our neighbors.
I hope everyone is enjoying the last couple of weeks of summer before schools start up again. I like seeing the parks being used each day by families and kids and sports teams enjoying the sunshine and our great town!