Alexandria was awarded a grant to complete roughly 1,000 feet of sidewalk from Thatcher Avenue to Stillwater Drive.
The city applied for the transportation alternatives grant totaling $520,993 from the Ohio Kentucky Indiana Regional Council of Governments, also known as OKI. The city was awarded the grant last year; however, the state requires transportation alternative grant awardees to follow their process for project implementation. That means the city is only allowed to move forward on the design portion of the project this year.
The project’s construction cost is roughly $300,000, which includes the vertical curb, ADA ramps, disposal, retaining walls, contingencies, etc. The cost difference will involve oversight, design study, right-of-way negotiation, traffic control, etc.
Alexandria received $48,106, a portion of the total funding, for the design portion of the project. That portion includes paying for an engineer’s design services and drawing up plans. The city must pay $12,000 toward that portion of the project. The city is required to pay roughly a quarter of the project total.
Alexandria City Council Member Stacey Graus said the design portion seemed expensive.
“That’s federal grants for you,” Alexandria City Administrator David Plummer said. “They do require you to jump through several hoops just to get qualified. There is environmental coordination with utilities along that route as well.”
Plummer also said the design phase will include surveying the area to see if the project requires easements to have the proper proportions the sidewalks require. He also said that they may need to move utility poles that are in the way. There are also other factors, like rock walls, that will have to be evaluated.
The next steps in the project will be released in future phases. The city is also not required to budget the total amount for the project—just the portions done in that fiscal year.
The sidewalk is expected to be completed in fiscal year 2027, going into 2028.
“I think if we didn’t have the grant, we didn’t have to jump through the hoops, we just had a contractor and said, ‘hey, we just want to run these sidewalks,’ I think the cost would be substantially less,” Graus said. “However, it would all be on our budget. We’d have to pay for it all.”
Plummer said the city could look into other grants to cover their portion of the cost, but it would need to be private or state funding, not federal.
“Is it more expensive than it really should be? Yes,” Graus said. “Is it going to be less expensive to the city of Alexandria than if we just did it on our own? Yes.”
Alexandria Mayor Andy Schabell said the city applied for the grant several years ago and barely missed the requirements. They tweaked the application and got approved about a year ago.
“Basically, with a federal project, it’s twice as much as if we were to do it, but they’re paying three-quarters of it, so we’re only paying a quarter, which is still only half of what we’d pay if we want to do it ourselves which is still a lot of money,” Schabell said. “So, we knew that going into it.”
