Monmouth Aldermen this week got a look at the budget for the next fiscal year, which includes a myriad of infrastructure projects that are moving forward in the next year.
City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher tells WGIL that the city’s new budget is 24 percent higher than the previous year’s budget due to some big projects on the horizon.
Steinbrecher says that state and federal grant funds helped fund those projects.
“The main reason for that is that we have received a number of grants within the last year and a lot of those projects are being funded for the upcoming fiscal year — some $7.5 million. That includes not only state and federal grant funds but some local matches.”
Infrastructure projects include the W. Harlem water main replacement, E. Euclid Ave. water main replacement and road reconstruction, public square water main replacement, and N. 6th Street water main replacement and resurfacing.
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Additionally, the city’s $1.2M local street resurfacing project will fix up streets throughout the city.
All these projects are to start after May 1, when the new fiscal year begins.
Some of these projects required local match funds, and many of them were funded by the sale of the city’s transfer station to Lakeshore Recycling, for which the city received $2M.
Steinbrecher says that the city has about $8M banked for these projects in local matches.
He adds that outside of those infrastructure projects, it is a fairly “status quo” budget, outside of a few pieces of equipment for the public works department that needed to be replaced.
