The city of Kent needs to decide soon whether it can hold on to $17 million in matching grants to construct railroad grade separation projects along three streets.
The state Freight Mobility Strategic Investment Board sent a letter in February to Kent Mayor Suzette Cooke to inform the city that the board will review the projects at its May 23 meeting in Yakima to decide whether or not to pull back the funds.
“The board will need to know that a secure funding plan has been approved and the city is moving forward to implement it,” wrote Karen Schmidt, executive director of the Freight Mobility Board in a letter to Cooke.
So far, the city has no funding plan for the projects that are designed to speed the flow of truck and vehicle traffic because drivers would no longer need to stop for trains. Kent is a hub for truck traffic with its large warehouse district in the valley.
The board has approved the following grants to the city to construct overpasses or underpasses to separate vehicle traffic from railroads:
• $10 million for South 212th Street BNSF/UP grade separations
• $4 million for Willis Street BNSF/UP grade separations
• $3.25 million for South 228th Street Union Pacific crossing
It will cost an estimated $25 million to construct a railroad grade separation at South 228th Street and the UP tracks, according to city documents. The Willis Street project would cost about $20 million and the South 212th Street construction about $30 million.
The City Council’s Public Works Committee directed staff last week along with a citizens committee to look at alternatives to fund the grade separation projects or whether it’s even worth pursuing the grants.
“The money is not ours but it’s earmarked for us,” said Public Works Director Tim LaPorte. “If we can’t afford it, we can’t afford it. If we’re going to make it happen, we need additional funds from a charge or a tax. We have support from the Kent Chamber of Commerce to build, but it falls apart on how we will pay for them.”
Council President Dennis Higgins, who also serves on the Public Works Committee, looks forward to seeing the citizens committee recommendations that are expected to be completed in May.
“They’re going to look at the priorities again and options to pay for those,” Higgins said. “Whatever they come back with will hold a lot of water for me.”
Higgins said he opposes cutting other city programs in order to save the grant money for railroad grade separation projects.
“I’m not going to cut the police department to build a railroad crossing if it comes to that,” Higgins said.
A citizens committee last year recommended to the council that the grade separation projects at Willis Street and South 212th Street be removed from the six-year Transportation Improvement Plan priority list.
“They wanted to deemphasize the grade separations and remove them from the list or make them a low priority,” Higgins said. “They kept 228th as a high priority.”
The South 228th Street construction remains a priority because the city in 2009 finished a grade separation at the BNSF tracks. That project cost $20 million, including $7 million from the federal government, $5 million from the state, $3 million from the state Freight Mobility Strategic Investment Board, $1 million from the Port of Seattle and $1 million from BNSF. The city spent $3 million.
“It took us 10 years to pull that money together,” LaPorte said.
LaPorte said city staff also has worked hard to be on the current list of grants from the Freight Mobility Board.
“The frustration is we spent a lot of time to get the grants,” LaPorte said.
City officials have known that the board might pull the funds. The board granted an one-year extension to Kent last year even though it had determined a lack of progress by the city to fund the three grade separation projects.
The board’s current stand asks for a specific funding plan from the city.
“If the project funding plan is not progressing to close the funding gap, your project or projects will be placed on the board’s deferred project list and the funds will be distributed to other projects that can advance,” according to the letter from Schmidt, the executive director. “There is no guarantee that if your project is placed on the deferred list and later can be reactivated that the funding will be available.”
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