A Slow Road To Safety District Would Add Lights, Sidewalks

It may take awhile to find the money for all the planned safety improvements in an area along Seltice Way where a middle school student died last month.

Nicholas R. Scherling, 13, was killed by a hit-and-run driver after dark on Nov. 10. He was walking his bicycle home from school on West Seltice Way - part of an urban renewal district scheduled to receive lighting next year.

An urban renewal district is an area the city has determined needs improvements such as lights and sidewalks to attract businesses. The mechanism the city uses to pay for those improvements is called tax increment financing and involves freezing the amount of taxes collected from the district. Taxes on new developments are not handed over to taxing districts until bonds sold to pay for infrastructure are paid off.

So far, tax increment financing in the West Seltice Way Urban Renewal District has raised $1.2 million.

The Urban Renewal Commission and the engineers it has hired haven’t formulated all of their plans for the area and hence haven’t estimated how much the improvements will cost. But the final price tag to add lighting, a traffic signal, a bike path, sidewalks and improvements to the water and sewer systems as the commission has discussed will cost more than what has been raised so far, said Jon Mueller of Architects West, the firm working on the plan.

The commission will have to prioritize, he said.

At a recent meeting, the commissioners, engineers and architects for the project worked on some of the details of the plan, examining where it will be feasible to build the bike path and sidewalk, where traffic signals and street lighting can go and what improvements the agency will need to make to the sewer and water systems.

The architects and engineers will present a more detailed plan to the commission in January.

“Street lights are going to be one of the top priorities,” said Karen Streeter, City Council member and chairwoman of the Urban Renewal Commission.

“It’s going to be such an improvement out there. With that little boy being killed by a car, safety is an even more important issue,” she said.

For tax increment financing in the West Seltice District to raise more money than the $1.2 million, more businesses will have to locate there. For example, Harpers Inc., a furniture manufacturer on West Seltice Way, landed the district $496,012 in tax increment financing last year.

“We have to make it attractive so businesses will come here and pay their taxes and then we’ll do some fancy stuff,” said Marilyn Hunt, a member of the Urban Renewal Commission.

Construction work on improvements should begin in early spring, Streeter said.

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