Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Fort Smith officials hear departments’ capital improvement plans
FORT SMITH — Administrators are asking to spend $ 45 million over the next decade to upgrade the city’s Solid Waste Department.
City directors heard several capital plans during a study session Tuesday evening. Deputy City Administrator Jeff Dingman presented the Solid Waste Department’s plan, as he’s currently acting as its interim director.
Dingman said in a memo to the board the equipment replacement schedule is regularly evaluated and can be adjusted due to equipment conditions or maintenance requirements.
The equipment subtotal for the 2022 capital improvement plan is almost $2.9 million and includes adding two front-load garbage trucks for residential collection, one front-load garbage truck for commercial collection, a service truck and crew cab pickup for fleet maintenance and a big bulldozer, an articulating dump truck and crew cab pickup for the landfill.
Dingman said a couple of items, including a ground compactor, were lease-purchased over the last three years. He said the department intends to stop leasing and buy the equipment it needs through a replacement program, keeping it as a frontline unit for its useful life, then having it as a reserve until it can be replaced.
The department also has a subsection project at the landfill, which brings next year’s total to $9,380,226. The subsections compact waste and help organize space.
Dingman said cell A-6 is the last subsection for phase A of the landfill, and the first cell for phase B is scheduled to be developed adjacent to the area before the landfill closes phase A. He said the department plans to develop a subsection around every five years afterward, which coincides with the cell’s operating life.
Dingman also discussed how the compressed natural gas conversion at the Solid Waste Department installation should be complete by the end of the year and available for use in early 2022. He said from this point forward, all of the department’s equipment will be replaced with natural gas-powered vehicles where available, especially the trucks that transport solid waste.
The city’s application for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grant money from the federal Environmental Protection Agency is pending, he said.
Dingman said if approved, the grant will pay two-thirds of the cost to replace up to 14 solid waste collection vehicles with natural gas-powered vehicles, and the 10-year schedule will be revised to
accommodate the accelerated replacement.
He said the fueling station is being outfitted to service natural-gas vehicles. The department will buy natural gas vehicles anyway, because it will already have a fueling station.
“There still are likely to be three collection vehicles that are going to show up as diesel, because we ordered them before this process, and it takes 12 months at least to get these things, from the time you issue a purchase order until the time it shows up,” he said.
Utility Director Lance McAvoy also presented plans for various water systems maintenance improvements. The plan is expected to cost roughly $332 million over the next 10 years.
The project subtotal for 2022 is about $34.2 million for water, $19.4 million for non-consent decree wastewater, and $36.3 million for consent decree wastewater.
Several projects relate to constructing a second water transmission line from Lake Fort Smith to the city should the first transmission line fail.
Other 2022 projects include replacing aging water lines, painting and maintaining several water tanks and having the Arkansas Department of Transportation do overlay, sidewalk and drainage improvements on Towson Avenue to reduce traffic disruptions associated with needing to access the utilities under the street.
McAvoy said the total project costs for 2022 is roughly $90 million, due to supply chain issues including increasing material costs.
Several directors discussed their concerns with approving the plan if there’s projects the city will have to postpone due to rising costs.
“You’re right, it only makes sense to do the absolute required projects, and we do have a lot of those, actually,” City Administrator Carl Geffken said.
“The transmission lines, that’s the first that comes to mind. So we’ll have to think strategically and be able to spend the money we have prudently so we don’t just go off and say what we think is $34 million for water could be $68 million. This is the plan with our estimate of what the cost can be, should be, but of course reality will dictate whether we can do it all or not. But this is our plan on what we would like to see done, if at all possible.”