MORGANTOWN — Would you be willing to pay additional user fees if it resulted in historic investment in pedestrian infrastructure in Morgantown?
Higher property taxes?
Those are among the initial options contemplated as part of the Morgantown Pedestrian Improvement Plan completed using a portion of the $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act money the city dedicated to sidewalks.
The plan recommends Morgantown City Council seek out $5 million annually for the next 10 years to be a dedicated revenue source for a range of connectivity improvements.
The result of that funding would be dozens of projects each year ranging from maintenance and replacement of existing assets (an estimated 50 annually), to moderately-sized spot improvements (10 annually), to higher-profile projects aimed at filling out the city’s sidewalk network with new infrastructure (1-2 annually).
The projects were not only sorted by size and scope, but potential impact using “a holistic analysis” to score infrastructure within the city in terms of the relative needs being addressed.
Prioritization scores factored in existing conditions, land uses, demographics and roadway characteristics
“You might choke, but the goal at this point is $5 million a year for sidewalks. That’s double, to three or four times the amount of money we spend on regular paving projects,” Staff Engineer Drew Gatlin told members of the city’s traffic commission. “It is an ambitious plan that will only touch the tip of the iceberg. We do have a backlog, more or less, from our idealized sidewalk network of somewhere between $500 million and a billion dollars of sidewalk work we need to do here in town. The plan that we’re proposing, that we’ll be asking you all to consider, that we’ll be asking city council to help us fund would be a $50 million, 10-year plan.”
According to information shared during a recent public input session, a handful of potential funding sources have been identified to help finance the work, including an excess levy, a new user fee or an increase in the existing user fee, among others.
It’s anticipated the plan will be presented to Morgantown City Council at some point in the near future.
The city has already invested in a series of ongoing “rapid response” pedestrian improvements to address portions of Selwin Street, University Avenue, Oakland Street, Eureka Drive, Prospect Street, Brockway Avenue, South Hills Drive and Dorsey Avenue.
Lakecrest Construction, out of Fairmont, was awarded a $558,450 contract to take on some of the work.
The city said the projects are anticipated to cost $1.5 million in total and are intended to give all Morgantown’s neighborhoods an example of the modern infrastructure they could expect with comprehensive sidewalk investments.
