Two public seminars on tax-increment financing and transportation development districts will be held by the city on Tuesday at Flint Hills Technical College. The seminars will start at 3 and 7 p.m. with the same content at each. TIFs and TDDs are indirect incentives that can be used to recruit new businesses or help existing ones.
During their meeting Wednesday, Emporia city commissioners approved a budget proposal for left-turn lanes at 15th Avenue and Industrial Road that set the city’s costs at $180,000, the first of three projects in the area to come up on the commission’s agenda Wednesday.
The Kansas Department of Transportation has committed to pay 90 percent of the construction costs, for the left-turn lanes, up to $540,000. City Engineer Keith Beatty said he was trying to get the whole budget set now, rather than get it approved piecemeal and have it come in higher than expected.
The project will start in 2009.
Commissioners also approved a change order to use 18-inch pipe in a right-turn lane project at 15th and Industrial instead of 15-inch pipe for an additional cost of $1,117. The discrepancy was due to a design error, Beatty said.
Finally, a bid to realign Dolly Madison’s entrance to Industrial Road was awarded to APAC-Kansas Shears Division at $38,471. With administrative and other costs, the total budget for the project is $43,000. The realignment is meant to keep trucks leaving Dolly from running across the path of cars turning into the Flinthills Mall.