SPECIAL OT THE TIMES/NEWS

Des Moines City Council members have deferred several improvements planned for major city streets to reduce a projected $1.675 million deficit in the capital budget this year.

Council members also directed city staff to prepare a draft resolution authorizing interfund loans totaling $600,000 to allow critical arterial streets capital improvements to continue. The lawmakers asked staff to pursue public works trust fund loans as well.

Mayor Bob Sheckler and Council members Dave Kaplan, Carmen Scott and Susan White voted for the ordinance, which was opposed by Mayor Pro Tem Dan Sherman and Councilman Ed Pina. Councilman Scott Thomassen was absent from that meeting last month.

Kaplan, who chairs the council's Public Safety and Transportation Committee, had earlier alerted his fellow lawmakers to the shortfall in revenue for the city's 2008 Arterial Streets Capital Improvements Program.

The director of the city's Planning, Building and Public Works Department, Grant Fredricks, told Council members the anticipated negative fund balance for the program will be at least $530,000 and could come to $1.445 million, depending on the lawmakers' decision.

The major problem, Fredricks continued, is a delayed $3.6 million payment that was anticipated from the Port of Seattle for streets within the planned Des Moines Creek Business Park that have been vacated by the city and transferred to the Port.

Those funds, initially expected by the end of last year, now may not be received until mid-2009, although they were included in the 2008 budget for arterial streets capital improvements.

"At this time last year, we were confident that the Port would select a developer [for the business park] by the end of 2007," Fredricks said. "But that didn't happen until May for a variety of reasons."

As a result, the city didn't vacate streets within the business park until June. Des Moines will get the money, now held in escrow, only after the council approves a master plan submitted by the developer, which isn't expected until next year.

Adding to the transportation budget deficit was $628,000 in emergency repairs to the abutment footing of the North Twin Bridge on 16th Avenue South, to Saltwater Bridge, and to Des Moines Memorial Drive, which experienced landslides during storms last winter.

"We have no one to blame but ourselves" for basing planned project expenditures on funds that were projected but not guaranteed to be received when they were needed, Kaplan said.

Arterial streets improvements deferred by the council action included annual sidewalk, guardrail and traffic-calming programs. Also temporarily nixed were pre-planning for the 16th Avenue South improvement program south of South 272nd Street, and accelerated planning and pre-design work for offsite infrastructure improvements to support development at the Des Moines Creek Business Park.

But $834,000 still will be spent to complete paving on Des Moines Memorial Drive, the city's comprehensive transportation plan, right-of-way negotiations for South 216th Street and Marine View Drive, the Redondo Boardwalk pilot repair project, and to begin planning, surveying and pre-design work on South 216th Street.

Prior to authorizing the resolution, the council voted to withhold funds for completing an in-house pavement management design project for 2009.