“It’s all about collaboration.”
That was the underlying theme of a needs assessment presentation by Waggoner Engineering, the city’s consultant to handle its more than $5 million of American Rescue Plan Act funding. A Waggoner team laid out a wide-ranging, multi-year study that totaled $125 million and addressed everything from drainage to blight to upgrading the Columbus Police Department.
Full funding requires using the city’s ARPA windfall as seed money to net matching funds and grants from a mixture of state and federal partners, Waggoner President and CEO Emad Al-Turk told the council on Tuesday.
In late December the council approved about $56,000 for Waggoner to perform a community needs assessment. Representatives then met with department heads, elected officials and citizens to get an overview of the city’s strengths and deficiencies. That culminated in a first draft presented to the council Tuesday, with Al-Turk opening by admitting that the city’s needs “significantly exceed” currently available funds.
Al-Turk, as well as Stephen Thompson and Jaynae Young, guided the council through their project framework over the course of an hour-long discussion. At its heart was $750,000 in general improvements, $104.4 million in infrastructure, especially pertaining to drainage, and $20 million for community development projects to address poverty and inequality.
Working over a period of years would be necessary to get the projects off the ground and keep them moving, with the majority of the money coming from state and federal sources, Al-Turk explained.
ARPA funds must be spent by the end of 2026.
Drainage
Waggoner allocated the bulk of the city’s $5 million to drainage issues, with eight sites in particular picked out: College Street, Second Avenue North, 15th Street South, parts of East Columbus in Ward 2 and Ward 3, Main Street, the Masonic Subdivision and Chapman Road.
“We’re going to add another site to that from Ward 1, Union Street, but we don’t have a detailed analysis of the cost of that yet,” Thompson said. “Those eight sites total about $48 million.”
“There are two elements — you have problems in the city itself, but those sites are not all the problems you have,” Al-Turk said. “If you look at the drainage problems you have, a lot of the water comes from outside the city.”
To alleviate that, Al-Turk urged the council to work with the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors, as well as pursuing matching funds from the state. He proposed $4 million each from the city and county — with a dollar-for-dollar match from the state, that would yield $16 million. As much as $26 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency flood relief grants were also on the table, although the city would need to pitch in a 25-percent match.
Ward 4 Councilman Pierre Beard pushed back. First he told Al-Turk that too much money was in play, because the council had obligated $1.3 million for premium pay. He also questioned the drainage priorities leaving out his ward.
“Northside floods, you guys,” he said. “When this rain comes through here, we’re probably going to be underwater these next two days. There are a lot of issues over there, and I don’t see any of those issues (on the list).”
“These sites came from all of you,” Al-Turk said. “We didn’t make them up.”
Al-Turk said they would go back and take a second look at some of the sites that Beard had recommended.
Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston said that $4 million from the county is too much.
“When (Waggoner) met with us, we made it clear to them that was too much of an ask,” Hairston said. “We’ve got needs in the county we need to handle.”
Hairston said rural water services were making requests and “they could spend our $11 million easily.”
“That request is not even close,” Hairston added.
He did encourage the city to make a more reasonable request, though.
“We’ve got to start somewhere, so they should just send us an ask and we’ll look at it,” he said. “Just run it up the flagpole like these rural water associations.”
Crime
Al-Turk said there were numerous funding sources to pursue to help CPD with issues ranging from pay to equipment.
“In talking to (Police Chief Fred Shelton) he said you’re losing officers primarily because you are not competitive in your salary structure,” he said.
About $400,000 of Waggoner’s plan is allocated toward salaries, with plans to pursue grant funding to make any raises sustainable.
Waggoner also recommended $10,000 be put toward buying more surveillance cameras, and about $380,000 for ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system.
The Department of Justice has community policing grants and violence prevention grants that would be a good fit for CPD, as well, he said.
Blight, poverty
Dilapidated housing is an “extremely important” element, Al-Turk said.
“There are 2,500 dilapidated homes in the city,” he said. “That’s a staggering number for a community of this size.”
Alleviating blight and cleaning up neighborhoods will also yield real-world advantages, including helping with issues like drainage.
“You can go around the city and fix all of the culverts and fix all of the drainage lines, but if you don’t fix issues causing those lines to clog, they’re just going to get clogged again,” Young said. “Neighborhood cleanup helps pick up all that debris.”
Al-Turk proposed putting $100,000 toward dilapidated housing removal, with Lowndes County kicking in the same amount. That local investment can then be leveraged to get $800,000 from the Mississippi Home Corp. and up to $4 million from Housing and Urban Development.
The council took no action. Al-Turk said that his team would rework the numbers to reflect the money set aside for premium pay, and also to add in the Union Street project and potentially some of Beard’s recommendations.
He did urge the city to go to the county and ask for funding as soon as possible, ideally at the board of supervisors’ meeting on Monday.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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