A quick fix-up of Downtown’s crumbling sidewalks and alleys may have fallen through the cracks.

City government funding for a joint project with the Center City Commission apparently won’t be part of Mayor A C Wharton’s capital improvement program budget request.

But Center City officials are still seeking a change in state law to free currently restricted funds for broader purposes including sidewalks, alleys, lighting and other features of the public realm.

City government and Center City officials had been discussing a joint $43 million, multiyear project to address Downtown’s top streetscape needs. First-year spending would have been about $2 million for design services, but no actual bricks-and-mortar improvements.

Vice president of planning and development Andy Kitsinger told the CCC board last week that the project hadn’t survived the city budget process. Wharton’s first budget request is going to the City Council later this month.

Center City officials have been searching for a way to shoulder part of the fix-up’s costs since last fall. Their most likely option is a trust fund, called a PILOT extension fund, generated by fees collected on 60 developments that received tax freezes prior to 1998.

State law restricts the money to paying for public facilities “with four walls and a roof” such as parking garages, president Jeff Sanford said.

An amendment to the state law governing tax freezes is making its way through the General Assembly. It would allow PILOT extension funds to be used for public purposes like infrastructure, with approval by Center City, city and county mayors, the council and County Commission.

Center City officials estimate current revenues for the fund would support about $20 million in long-term bonds.

City Engineer Wain Gaskins said the Downtown streetscape project was favorably reviewed, but is among many that can’t be funded in a lean budget year.

Gaskins said a capital budget review committee received requests for $317 million in projects including some funded by non-city sources like the federal government.

“We certainly don’t have anywhere near that amount of money to distribute,” said Gaskins. “We can’t fund every project in the next fiscal year.”

–Wayne Risher: 529-2874

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