Village OKs road upgrade work

The Belgium Village Board on Monday unanimously agreed to do engineering work for a multi-million dollar project to upgrade and repair sanitary and water mains and storm sewers on Elevator Lane, North,  Elm, Commerce and Park streets.

The project would include multiple retention ponds, but the locations have yet to be determined. The village doesn’t own the land at several potential sites, including one spot owned by the fire department near the firehouse, another near Park and Commerce streets and on one or both sides of Elevator Lane.

Trustee Josh Borden asked how the project could go forward without the village owning land for the ponds.

Public Works Director Dan Birenbaum said the ponds would be addressed.

“I wanted to know if this project would go ahead so we could start talking about the ponds,” he said.

An area on Park Street, he said, gets flooded a few times a year.

“We get all the phone calls,” Birenbaum said. “We have to get the ball rolling.”

The project would include inflow and infiltration improvements. Video footage of the pipes  shows cracks that allow water to enter during rainstorms, Birenbaum said at a joint meeting of the Public Works and Public Utilities committees June 25.

That can overwhelm the village’s wastewater treatment plant.

The project cost would range from $5 million to $6 million, depending on the length of the village’s loan, according to Village Treasurer Vickie Boehnlein.

If the project is done in 2021, a five-year loan would cost a total of $4.956 million. A 10-year loan would cost $5.23 million and a 20-year loan would cost $6.08 million.

Regardless of the loan’s length, costs would be split between the village’s general, water and sewer funds. The general fund would pay 60% and the water and sewer would pay 20% each.

“Assuming the tax base stays pretty flat or goes up,” Boehnlein told the joint committee, the general fund should be able to handle the payments.

Helping the cause is the scheduled closure of a tax incremental finance district in 2024. It would return $282,000 of annual tax revenue that the village could use for hte project.

The joint Public Works and Public Utilities committee unanimously recommended doing the engineering work.