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DURHAM -- The city's General Services Department is poised to spend at least $500,000 on catch-up maintenance projects targeting facilities like City Hall, the Durham Police Department's headquarters and two public swimming pools.
The initiative, funded with an allocation in City Manager Tom Bonfield's fiscal 2009-10 budget request, could grow in the current fiscal year if the close-out of last year's books shows the city did better financially than analysts first estimated.
But the idea either way is to increase what the city allots and spends on a cash basis for building maintenance, thus lowering its reliance on periodic bond issues to come up with large amounts of capital.
The problem for Bonfield and General Services Director Joel Reitzer is that even at $500,000 a year, the city's maintenance needs dwarf the cash available.
Reitzer noted that several years ago, consultants estimated it would take a steady infusion of $6 million to $7 million a year to knock down the then-existing backlog.
City Council members acknowledged the discrepancy during a briefing last Thursday. The money Bonfield added to this year's budget is "a baby step forward," Councilman Eugene Brown said, acknowledging that because of the recession officials had to balance maintenance needs with expected drops in revenue.
Reitzer and his staff estimated that if more money was available, they could allot up to $1.2 million this year to short-term maintenance efforts.
But with just the $500,000, they'll concentrate on solving problems like the periodic flooding that plagues the City/County Planning Department, which operates out of the City Hall basement.
Other projects include elevator repairs to a downtown parking deck and work on the fire escape at police headquarters.
The only change council members asked Reitzer to make to his priority list was to make sure the installation of child-safe pool drains covers at the Edison Johnson and I.R. Holmes community centers is completed in this cycle.
That work is a federal mandate and is scheduled to be done by the end of the year, said Lori Blake-Reid, manager of General Services' facility operations division.
Brown also said he'd like to see a report on how well the city has done, with cash or bond revenue, in addressing the maintenance issues consultants identified in 2003 as officials were beginning to plan for a big bond package that went to voters two years later.
Reitzer, a Bonfield hire who took over at General Services this past spring, said the department could spell out "how well we're tracking along" with that.
Similar urgings for cash spending have come in the road-paving arena. Public Works Director Katie Kalb has estimated it would take a steady $5 million a year in cash to keep the city close to an industry-standard paving schedule.
There too the city has relied on bonds to make up the difference, though Bonfield has said he'd like to beef up cash allocations for paving in the fiscal 2010-11 budget proposal he gives the council next spring.
