By Mayor Julie Van Domelen

Redstone Review

LYONS – Although it is not as high-profile as other issues, one of the main responsibilities of local government is keeping public infrastructure in good working order. Most folks don’t spend much time thinking about the condition of our water pipes (unless one breaks on your property) or the roads (unless there are big potholes on the street where you live). With keen competition for budget resources, maintenance is often neglected in favor of other budget priorities. The problem is that skimping on maintenance now ends up costing you more over the long term.

We have all heard about the crumbling infrastructure in the US, from roads to bridges to water and sanitation. A 2009 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. a D grade, with a five-year capital investment need estimated at $2.2 trillion. The situation is similar at the state level, with more than 40% of Colorado’s roads rated as being in poor condition and 17 percent of our bridges structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Overall, Colorado gets a C grade, better than the national average but far from ideal. Locally, the picture is not any rosier. This November, the City of Boulder is asking the voters for $49 million in bonds to improve roads, bridges and other public facilities in need of repairs. The city has a $700 million backlog of maintenance projects that will end up costing even more if not addressed now.

How are we doing in Lyons? The BOT and staff are making serious efforts to answer that question. For the first time, five-year capital improvement plans (CIPs) have been developed for streets, water, sanitation and electricity. These CIPs assess the state of our infrastructure and prioritize needed expenditures over the medium-term.

Some of the initial results are in. Though staff, and the utilities, and the Engineering and Utilities Advisory Board are still providing comments and final figures are not yet available, an initial picture is emerging:

For roads, generally infrastructure in town is in good condition. This is largely because most of the roads are fairly new due to the more recent development of the neighborhoods in Eagle Canyon, Stone Canyon, Lyons Valley Park, etc. However, streets in many locations in the older parts of town are well beyond their expected design service life and there are other locations where basic improvements such as sidewalks, curbs and gutters were never completed. The price tag on the highest priority repairs: over $700,000 for 17 key road repair projects. This does not include some key bridge repairs that need to be done on the Second Avenue and McConnell bridges. The analysis further finds that town has been under-budgeting for maintenance, creating this backlog of needed investments.

In the water and sanitation areas, the situation is similar. I remember that when the Main Street project was being constructed, wooden pipes were taken out of Main Street and sent to the Redstone Museum for historical interest. As with roads, most of the older infrastructure in need of repairs is in the older parts of town. The initial draft of the CIP identifies $320,000 in priority sanitation pipeline projects and $910,000 in water system repairs, a booster station and water main looping to improve service delivery.

The main question will be how to finance these capital improvements. If we ignore these needs, infrastructure will continue to deteriorate and cost us much more down the line. Borrowing money through bonds, as Boulder is doing, is an expensive option.

For example, borrowing the money to fund infrastructure repairs will cost Boulder on the order of $10 million in interest payments alone. For Lyons, we have sufficient reserve money in the water and sanitation funds to begin programming these priority capital improvements. This is not the case in the general fund, which is the funding source for roadway infrastructure.  The total budget in the general fund is about $1 million annually. Finding budget space for the $200,000 needed over the next five years to address critical backlog of street repairs is daunting.  Absent additional revenues, it is unlikely that these needs can be fully addressed and we will continue to patch up potholes on an ad-hoc basis.

These capital improvement plans have been critical to pointing the way to how much needs to be done. Repairing streets, water pipes and sewer systems may not be the most exciting expenditures, but it is a critical measure of local government performance. As Benjamin Franklin so rightly pointed out, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Julie Van Domelen was elected mayor of Lyons in 2009 in a special election. She was re-elected mayor in April 2010. Mayor Van Domelen works part time as an economist for the World Bank. She lives with her family in Lyons and can be reached at juliev@townoflyons.com.

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