How will the City of Decorah pay for redoing Locust Road?

An engineering consulting firm is estimating the cost of reconstructing Locust Road from College Drive to Highland Drive to be $6.4 million.

Monday night, Decorah City Council members discussed what might be the best way to tackle the financing of the project.  The biggest concern is that the city might have to borrow $4 million to $5 million if the road project was done all at once.  That would impact the city's property tax rate.

Decorah Mayor Lorraine Borowski suggested the project might be done over six or seven years, but city council members didn't like the idea.  Kirk Johnson questioned disrupting traffic for that long of a time.  Ross Hadley suggested there would be "economies of scale" to bid the project all at once.

City council members did agree that the project should start at the south end at College Drive and work up the hill.  There was support for doing the project to Pinecrest Drive right away, but mixed opinions about the need to do the segment from Pinecrest to Highland.

City Administrator Chad Bird has been asked to draw up different financing options in time for the next city council meeting.