Three years ago Chelsea priced the job of repaving the parking lot behind City Hall and the Senior Center and put it in the fiscal 2025 capital plan. The lot has not been paved. On Monday the City Council is asked to move $270,599.66 from two other capital accounts to finish it. The letter explaining why is short, and it says a good deal about how capital money moves in this city.
Why the lot waited
City Manager Fidel Maltez’s letter says the paving “has been delayed pending construction of the Microgrid Battery Storage System in the City Hall lot.” Nobody paves a lot they are about to dig up for a battery installation, so the delay itself is unremarkable. The cost of waiting is the point. “Asphalt costs have risen significantly in the 3 years since the cost estimate was prepared in fall 2023,” Maltez writes, “and we have found the parking lot to be even further degraded than previously observed and a greater depth of removal and repaving is now needed in several areas.” The design has also grown: “We have also added a concrete walkway to the design for pedestrians to safely pass through the lot.”
The letter does not say what the fall 2023 estimate was, what the project will now cost, or how much of the original FY2025 appropriation remains. It says only that “additional funding will be needed to complete the project,” and that the $270,599.66 will let DPW “commence” the work.
Where the money comes from
Two roadway accounts in the current year’s capital plan. Annual Roadway and Sidewalk Improvements was funded at $1,000,000 for FY2027 and, according to the order, still has $642,794.39 unspent. Roadway Safety and Traffic Control Enhancements was funded at $500,000 and has $439,046.39 left. The order takes $96,058.82 from the first and $174,540.84 from the second. Both are listed as “Ongoing / Alternate Funding.”
The alternate funding is the state’s. Maltez writes that the city received Winter Recovery Assistance Program money “that can be used for roadway improvements and a Fair Share Supplemental Budget earmark for pedestrian safety improvements.” Because those grants can pay for road and sidewalk work the city had planned to fund itself, the city’s own money in those two accounts is freed up, and under Chapter 44, Section 20 of the General Laws the council can redirect an appropriation “no longer needed” for its original purpose to another capital project. That is the vote on Monday. The letter does not give the WRAP or earmark amounts.
The pattern
This is the third time this year the council has been asked to sweep leftover capital money toward a project that ran short. In April it moved $90,000 of unspent 2020 capital funds into the roadway safety account for the Broadway project. The FY2028 capital plan process, which Maltez formally launched at the September 14 meeting, promises to keep doing it: the city “will continue to review the status of all previous Capital Improvement Plan projects” so that “any unspent funds are identified and can be redirected to the City’s most pressing priority needs or closed out to Free Cash.”
The other way to read the order is as a snapshot of how much of this year’s road money is still sitting there in mid-September: $1,081,840.78 of $1.5 million, or about 72 percent, with the paving season a few weeks from over. Some of that is timing; capital projects are bid and paid over more than one year. Some of it is the state money arriving. Either way, the accounts that were supposed to fix Chelsea’s streets and sidewalks this year have money to spare, and the first call on it is the lot where City Hall parks.
What the council could ask
The original estimate and the current one. The balance of the FY2025 appropriation. The size of the WRAP and Fair Share awards, and which streets they will pay for instead. And when the battery system will be done, since the lot cannot be paved until it is. None of those numbers is in the packet. Ways and Means, which took last week’s transfers, is not listed for this one; the order is on the regular agenda for a vote.