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The Mississippi Department of Transportation has awarded the city a Transportation Alternatives Program grant to improve pedestrian access on a portion of Fifth Street north of downtown, but the city has to get its outstanding 2020 audit finished in order to keep the money.
In January MDOT awarded Columbus a little more than $1 million in TAP funding to improve the Fifth Street corridor between Fifth Avenue and Ninth Avenue North. Fifth Avenue is the street running along the north side of the Magnolia Bowl, and Ninth Avenue is the last cross-street before the on-ramp for Highway 82 East.
City Engineer Kevin Stafford said the grant’s primary purpose is to make the area more friendly for pedestrians and bicycle riders, but planned improvements should also slow traffic.
“There are no pedestrian or bike lanes now, and the area sees a lot of foot traffic,” Stafford said. “Because the street is so wide, people fly through there.”
In addition to adding sidewalks, Stafford said islands would be installed in the middle of the road. This both narrows the road, calming traffic, and also makes it safer for walkers.
“Pedestrians can shelter on the islands,” he said. “Walkers will only have to cross one lane at a time instead of Frogger-ing their way across three lanes like they do now.”
The islands will be landscaped to make the area more attractive, he said, and stripling will be improved all through the area.
“We can also better define how people get in and out of those businesses,” Stafford said. “As it is right now, you can have five people trying to get out (onto Fifth Street) five different ways.”
MDOT is putting in about $1,046,000, Stafford said. The whole project is estimated to cost $1.4 million.
“It’s technically a 20 percent match for the city,” Stafford said. “But design isn’t included in the grant. The city has to pay for that. I’m guessing the city will end up having about $330,000 or so in the project.”
Columbus Redevelopment Authority Board President Marthalie Porter said the project will tie in well with the Burns Bottom redevelopment just west of the corridor, as well as the surrounding areas.
“The streetscape will be more like what we have downtown,” she said. “It will really help the entryway for our project, both at the Magnolia Bowl and at Little Dooey (restaurant, at 701 Highway 45.)”
Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones, whose ward includes that stretch of road, said he is “honored” the city got the grant.
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“I think it’s a great idea,” he said. “It will allow people to walk from their neighborhoods to the soccer complex and the amphitheater, once it’s done. In the long term it’s going to be a definite plus for the area, and give it continuity (with Downtown and the soccer complex.)”
“We want to encourage people to get out and walk,” Mayor Keith Gaskin said. “A lot of that area is not pedestrian-friendly. The whole area needs to be made more easily accessible, and now it will be tied into the soccer complex and the Riverwalk.”
Audit problems
The potential fly in the ointment is the city’s still incomplete audit of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020. The audit is lagging due to record-keeping problems, with the sole outstanding piece being a copy of the amended budget for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020, which was tied to the minutes of the Nov. 3, 2020, council meeting.
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“We have searched high and low for it, and not been able to find it,” Gaskin said. “We reached out to (former CFO Deliah Vaughn) and members of her staff and were not able to locate it. They are moving on without it.”
All the other tardy documents — including records on the Sim Scott Community Center rebuild and fine collections in Municipal Court — have been turned over, Gaskin said.
Municipalities have private agencies perform audits yearly, which must be submitted to the state.
Gaskin said the city has to show MDOT by March 15 that the outstanding audit issues have been resolved or risk losing the grant.
“We applied for this in the past and didn’t get it because of the audit issues, and we’re trying to make it work this time,” Gaskin said.
Stafford confirmed that the city had been turned down previously.
“Last year we applied for it and we were told to take a powder and try again later,” he said.
The city has gotten grants from TAP, or predecessor programs, in the past, Stafford said, including funding for the Riverwalk, the pedestrian bridge and the roundabout at Harvey’s.
Gaskin said he didn’t know if the city would meet the deadline.
“I’m doing everything I can to make sure it gets done, but I can’t guarantee anything at this point,” he said. “(Watkins Ward and Stafford) are working on it now, but they’ve only had the information they needed for a short time.”
He said he doubted the entire audit would be finished by March 15.
“I hope when they see we are doing what we can that we’ll be able to hang on to it,” Gaskin said. “This is a clear example of how important a clean audit is and how important it is we be able to show we handled our finances correctly. This probably would not have happened if we had had a forensic audit done.”
Gaskin had pressed for a forensic audit, but the council voted it down on two separate occasions.
Jones said losing the money was “definitely a threat.” The city recently hired a chief operations officer, who will start in March. However, it reopened its search for a chief financial officer to replace Deliah Vaughn, who left in September.
“The quicker we get a chief financial officer hired, the quicker we will get a handle on these issues,” Jones said. “We’ve got to be able to show that we have all our ducks in a row.”
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