Supply chain issues force HS to move ’21 items to ’22 budget

Supply chain issues required the Hot Springs Board of Directors to reappropriate more than $13 million budgeted for 2021 into the 2022 budget.

The reappropriated funds will pay for items budgeted in 2021 that hadn’t been received by the end of the year.

The $3.9 million reappropriated from the wastewater fund for sewer line improvements the city is making in the Gulpha Basin of its wastewater collection system was the biggest outlay transferred to this year’s budget, according to information provided to the board.

The consent administrative order the city entered into with the state Department of Environmental Quality last month requires it to shore up the Gulpha Basin. According to the CAO, the city reported 140 sewer system overflows in the basin from January 2018 through the end of last June. The overflows are a product of runoff from periods of prolonged rainfall that infiltrates the collection system, causing the manhole near the Catherine Heights Road pump station to overflow into the mouth of Gulpha Creek when rainfall accumulates over several days.

The consent agenda the board will consider Tuesday night includes a resolution awarding a $459,000 contract to Hawkins-Weir Engineers for engineering and construction management services for improvements in the Gulpha Basin. Major Capital Projects Manager Todd Piller told the board earlier this week that Hawkins-Weir will oversee work on a 1.23-mile section of gravity main from Gorge Road to the intersection of Vernal and Spring streets. A $3.5 million cost is estimated for the construction phase of the project.

“One of the reasons it’s the size it is, we have had a hard time getting product,” City Manager Bill Burrough, referring to the $13 million reappropriated into the 2022 budget, told the board earlier this month. “We’re experiencing supply chain issues, from things we use on an everyday basis to $3 million to $4 million for the pipeline project.”

The city told the board earlier this week it’s awaiting delivery of about a dozen vehicles it ordered last year.

CBID III

The board adopted an ordinance dissolving Central Business Improvement District III, the Central Avenue area bound by Market Street to the south and Prospect Avenue and Spring Street to the north that comprises more than 40 parcels.

The city said CBID III was formed in December 2002. Since that time, property owners in the area have been pay

ing assessments securing a loan financing streetscape improvements. Property owners who hold almost two-thirds of the district’s real property value petitioned the board to dissolve the district, telling the city the loan held by Bank of America was paid in full in November.

The improvements, which include lamp posts, benches, tree barricades and flower baskets, will transfer to the city when the district is dissolved at the end of March. Burrough said the city will use its general fund to maintain the improvements, as it’s done with amenities funded by other downtown improvement districts that have since dissolved.

“We do have a good relationship with our downtown business community, but we’ve primarily worked with them through our Christmas lights,” Burrough told the board earlier this month. “They’ve done quite a bit in helping us pay for those but not so much on the other amenities we have downtown, from the benches, trees, waste receptacles and light poles.”