The Decatur City Commission is set to vote this evening on City Manager Peggy Merriss’ proposal to repurpose the remaining $3.6 million in bond funds tagged from public works to the Decatur Recreation Center and “to authorize the City Manager to develop a financing package for additional capital improvement needs.” (The City Commission is also scheduled to hold a work-session on “Capital Improvement Options” at 6:30p, prior to the city commission meeting.)

In her letter to the commission (page 19 of the materials PDF), City Manager Peggy Merriss reflected on why projects ended up costing more than the original estimates, and recommended approval of the item.

As part of each project, significant public input was included to define the needs and desires of the community.  As master plans were developed, recommendations were made to develop long-term solutions to address facility needs instead of making short-term renovations and repairs.  This resulted in investing more of the bond funds in the projects that have been completed in order to assure that we were constructing high-quality facilities and making improvements that would be an asset to the community.

…”It is recommended that the City Commission approve moving forward with financing improvements to those three facilities [Public Works, Rec Center, Fire Station #1] in order to take advantage of existing competitive construction prices and a highly favorable capital market.  In addition, if the projects are not completed, it is quite possible that costs will be incurred for significant non-budgeted maintenance activities.  By making these capital improvements at this time, we will continue to support the desirability of the City of Decatur as a well-maintained community, we will see significant improvement in energy and utility costs and current and future budget estimates indicate that based on conservative assumptions, improvements can be made without a millage rate increase.

In case you missed it, the city told the AJC last week that the way to fund these projects without a millage rate (tax) increase was to pay for it using reserve funds until the HOST issue with DeKalb was resolved, and then use that nearly $1 million a year in new sales tax revenue to pay off the bonds.

Over at The Decatur Minute, Lyn gives two updates regarding the ongoing Glenlake Park improvements.

The first is that construction of the Glenlake bathhouse is finally complete, so the pool will reopen pool this Friday with free swimming from 5:30p-7p on Friday and all day (10a-6p) Saturday.

The second is an update on the restoration of Glenn Creek bank restoration, which looks to be coming along nicely.  Click over to see the new and improved creek (now without concrete walls!) and learn how the city is restoring the creek bank.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Lyn promises more pics as the project progresses.