Council approves $3 mil in project spending

With a single vote, the city council approved funding in the neighborhood of $3 million for three projects at its Jan. 9 meeting.

All three projects were part of the consent agenda and, while the top-line amount is around $3 million, the total coming from city funds is much less at $485,000.

The first project is an addition to about $2.5 million already approved for rehabilitation of streets in the area known as Golf Course Estates, located around the Municipal Golf Course. The new funding of $499,390 brings the total price tag for the project to just shy of $3.1 million.

The new funding, along with the amount already approved, will be paid out to Las Vegas Paving Corporation. The source of all funding for the project is the Regional Transportation Commission. Director of Public Works Jamie Curreri explained where that money comes from in a statement originally published back in July of last year.

“RTC dollars come from three sources of funding,” he said. “Fuel Revenue Indexing (FRI), Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax (MVFT) and sales tax collected in Clark County. Boulder City motorists contribute, as do business patrons and local businesses. In essence, we are getting $3 million from a fund where we already contribute.”

Work on the project began on Dec. 12.

The second project funded also was originally approved last year when Boulder City got a federal grant from the Economic Development Agency via the Nevada Division of Outdoor Recreation under the EDA’s Dark Skies Initiative.

The council agreed to award up to $700,000 per fiscal year for up to three years to Codale Electric Supply Inc. for the purchase of supplies and equipment involved in upgrading the city’s streetlights.

The new LED-based lights are designed to illuminate only the road surface below them while vastly minimizing the amount of light thrown into the sky. Eventually, most streetlights in Boulder City will be replaced, with the exception of the lights in the historic downtown area.

The total amount of the grant is more than $2.5 million with $1.9 million of that coming from the EDA. Boulder City is on the hook for $617,898, however, most of that comes in the form of staff hours for installation of the new lighting with just $200,000 coming in cash from the city over a four-year period.

The final amount is all city funds and will be spent on a new ambulance for the fire department.

One of the city’s four ambulances has been experiencing “significant mechanical issues”, according to a staff report. The difficulty in getting repairs done has resulted in the city needing to borrow a unit from the Henderson Fire Department or the Lake mead National Recreation Area on some occasions.

Actually “new” might not be the best way to describe the ambulance. The city will actually spend $285,276 to buy a “remounted” rescue unit. Going this route will save both money and time, according to a staff report. A new ambulance would cost an additional $115,000 and would not actually arrive on site for at least two full years from the time the order was placed.

The process involves the vendor, R Enterprises, taking a rescue box (the actual ambulance part of the vehicle) from an existing ambulance, refurbishing it and placing it on a new Dodge 5500 4x4 chassis.

Per the report, cost of a new ambulance would be at least $340,000 and current wait times for delivery are between two and four years.