Springfield City Council will hear the first reading of a bill Monday that would allocate $5 million to neighborhood projects.
The Citizens Advisory Board or CAB Thursday voted to send the city’s recommendations for spending the money to council. The proposed list was formulated using feedback from hundreds of city residents through the NeighborWorks+ program.
Neighborhood Works+ is an expanded version of the City of Springfield’s Neighborhood Works program. The program focuses on collaboration between residents, registered neighborhood associations and the city’s multi-departmental team of Public Works, Planning and Development and Public Information Department staff to identify priority projects to improve livability, safety, and neighborhood pride, according to the city.
Springfield residents were invited to share what the top needs in their neighborhoods are.
The list of potential projects was whittled down through the NAC Subcommittee, which was made up of eight citizens – two from each zone.
Dane Seiler, a consultant on the project, said that group helped them navigate through a prioritization project as they decided which of 160 potential projects totaling around $70 million to fund.
"We have a lot of traffic calming. If you remember, speeding and traffic safety was roughly 40%," he said, and so, we got a lot of traffic calming here and sidewalks."
Another 20% of the suggestions were related to sidewalks. About 10% of comments were about stormwater and quality of place.
Some were eliminated because they couldn't be completed in the timeline the city wants to adhere to.
Seiler said about 1/3 of the 160 proposals were capital improvement projects "that would probably be beyond what a NeighborWorks project would be," so those were eliminated.
Some required acquiring rights-of-way and would be long-term projects. Stormwater projects need "a bit more analysis and planning," he said, so those were eliminated.
There are projects in 21 of Springfield’s 24 neighborhoods. They include pedestrian improvements in Rountree, traffic calming and pedestrian enhancements in several neighborhoods, including West Central, Fassnight, Greater Parkcrest, Mark Twain, Midtown and Doling and sidewalk updates in Woodland Heights.
Nancy Williams, chair of the city's Neighborhood Advisory Council, explained why three neighborhoods were left off the final list.
"Grant Beach had some ideas, and those are already getting done through the natural city process," she said. "Oak Grove had mostly stormwater and right-of-way issues that need to be resolved before we do those projects. And then on the west side, the projects that we looked at there, they were a little bit lower on the conductivity we were looking when we looked at, specifically, sidewalk or walkability," which needed more study before moving forward.
Funding for NeighborhoodWorks+ round one projects comes from the ½-cent portion of the Spring Forward SGF ¾-cent sales tax.
If approved, the projects are expected to begin soon and will be finished by the end of next summer.
