On Tuesday, the East Lansing City Council passed the budget for fiscal year 2015, as well as three plans for infrastructure repair.
The plans, which were all passed at once under the council’s consent agenda, will provide contracts to building companies to repair local residential roads to the north of East Lansing and major sidewalk ramps along M.A.C. Avenue.
Repairs to the roads and sidewalks come after a brutal winter season which left roads and sidewalks in disarray.
The council also repaid a company that made emergency repairs to city sewers which broke in March, leaving a large sinkhole on Harrison Road.
In addition to the direct infrastructure changes, the council also approved a budget which will focus more city spending on much needed infrastructure maintenance.
The approval for the budget comes after a long process that started in January.
On the surface the overall budget looks similar to previous years.
“For the most part, we pay for the same things year after year,” city manager George Lahanas said. “All of the big pots of money stay the same every year. Because of that, there is a lot of consistency in budgets from year to year.”
But there are some differences.
“With this budget we are starting to focus on public infrastructure,” Lahanas said.
With a 7.3 percent increase to the local roads fund and reconstruction projects for Bogue Street and Abbot Road, the city will start to see repairs to roads which have been neglected in recent years.
“We’ve been plaining the shift for some time. We wanted to make progress on legacy cost first, we also wanted to see a turn in the economy,” Lahanas said. “It’s the right time and it’s the needed time to make the change to infrastructure.”
The council was quick to pass the budget during its meeting with little discussion. The council has previously met for a series of “special budget work sessions” to debate the budget at length.
The budget will go into effect on the start of the fiscal year — July 1, 2014.
