Inflation Throws Wrench In East Spring Street Sidewalk Plans

Cookeville hopes to move forward with sidewalks on East Spring Street this Spring.

The question is, how much sidewalk can they buy six years after getting the grant? City Manager James Mills said the estimated project cost has doubled since applying.

“A new estimate we’ve got Greg is substantially more than what we originally budgeted for this,” Mills said. “What we plan on proceeding with is going ahead and bidding the project, expecting it to be much higher than what it was originally proposed to be.”

Mills said the city could have a few options on completing the project. That would include either putting in less sidewalks or Cookeville putting more local money towards the project.

“I want to give you a heads up,” Mills said. “Expect that when we come back we may have to be asking you to consider putting a little more in so we can have this project completed. We’ll know when we get the bids back, but we either can modify and re-bid or go ahead and consider, if we have to, putting additional funds in.”

Mills said Cookeville completed its application in 2014, and submitted in 2015 for the T-DOT grant. The state match can not exceed $950,000.

Mills said during Tuesday night’s Joint Economic Development Board Meeting, he believes the project could have completed under different circumstances.

“The project cost has doubled since we applied for the grant. So will the council decide to go ahead with it, I don’t know, so that’s really, really disappointing,” Mills said. “If they’d given us a third of the money, we could have used our own staff and had the sidewalks built in the first year.

Public Works Director Greg Brown said Monday night the next step is hiring a consultant. Cookeville will consider approval of Construction Engineering Inspection’s services Thursday night.