KDOT Grant and Sales Tax Dollars will Fund Improvements
By Katie Schroeder
BELOIT – The Beloit City Council met in a special meeting on Tuesday, March 11th. All council members were present along with City Manager Halley Roberson, City Clerk Amanda Lomax, City Attorney Katie Schroeder, City Engineer Stuart Porter, and Scott Crist of UMB Bank.
The first order of business was reviewing bids for the North Walnut and East 8th Street Projects. Council members were pleased with the bids and voted to proceed with the projects for both streets. Andale Construction out of Park City, Kansas was selected as the contractor for the project with a bid of $4,453,017.
The scope of the project will consist of a complete rebuild of portions of North Hersey near the Beloit Trojan Stadium, Gaylord Street, and North Walnut from Gaylord Street to Highway 24. The second part of the project is a complete rebuild of East 8th Street from Hersey Avenue to Poplar Street.
Funds for the project will come from a $1,000,000 KDOT Cost Share grant, $453,017 from the City’s Capital Improvement fund, and a $3,000,000 General Obligation Bond. The bond will be for a period of 15 years and bond payments will be paid from the City’s Capital Improvement Fund. All funds within the City’s Capital Improvement fund come from sales tax proceeds. No property taxes will be utilized to fund this project.
The City Council will consider an ordinance authorizing the issuance of the bonds at its March 19th meeting. Closing of the bonds is slated for April 3, 2025. The street construction projects will be completed in phases with the first phase consisting largely of the curves and Gaylord Street. This construction will occur from May to August 2025. Further construction will take place in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.
City Manager Halley Roberson thanked Schwab Eaton for their engineering work on the project and thanked City Clerk and Director of Finance Mandy Lomax for her hard work in putting together the KDOT Cost Share Grant Application. “The award of the $1 million from KDOT really made this project feasible. Mandy put a tremendous amount of time and effort into that grant application, and her efforts are the reason this much-needed project can move forward,” stated Roberson. “Together with the housing development at North Campus, the Beloit High School Stadium improvements, and now this street project, we are excited to see all the changes that will be occurring in that part of town.”
