City council delays downtown revitalization project contract

Blaine City Council tabled voting on the engineering design services contract for Blaine’s Downtown Revitalization Project during its November 14 meeting. Council was expected to vote on the contract in mid-September but has pushed the vote several times.

If approved, the contract would award Seattle-based KPG Psomas Inc. $620,000 to provide engineering design services for the revitalization project. The revitalization project is expected to cost $2.83 million total, paid for by already allocated funding. 

The project would beautify the downtown core through improvements such as landscaping and flowerbeds, public art, benches, bike racks and pedestrian signs on Peace Portal Drive. The project is also expected to install a pavilion at G Street Plaza, improve the Martin Street parklet and upgrade public spaces to improve ADA accessibility. 

Council was set to vote on the contract during the last council meeting, on October 24, but tabled the vote because councilmembers Garth Baldwin and Mike Hill were absent. With Baldwin and Hill not present at the November 14 meeting, council unanimously decided to table the vote again at the urging of councilmember Eric Davidson.

Interim city manager Dave Wilbrecht said delaying the vote pushed the project timeline, but didn’t cause major problems. 

“It’s a project, so it just starts later,” he said. “There was a schedule put together and that was based upon it being approved earlier. It just rotates the schedule.”

Davidson told the other councilmembers he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to approve the contract. 

“It’s a lot of money for a lot of fun stuff,” he said. “I’m hesitant to vote ‘yes’ on it with the state we’re in, as far as our budget goes. That doesn’t mean that next year or six months from now we won’t be in a better spot but I’m hesitant to say ‘yes’ on it.”

Councilmember Richard May asked Wilbrecht what percentage of the project funding was grants and what percentage was money that could be spent on more urgent needs. 

“How much of this money only exists because we’re doing this fun thing, and if we don’t do this fun thing, that money never passes through Blaine at all?” May asked.

Wilbrecht said he would return to council with answers to the financial questions. He said the city would need to complete some of the project’s objectives for safety reasons such as street repairs, tree removal and sidewalk repairs. Those repairs would go into the operations budget if not included in the downtown revitalization, he said. 

“There were some things in this project that we’re going to do anyway because they’re relative to safety,” Wilbrecht said. “If it’s not approved by council, we’ll find a way to drive it into the operations budget because we can’t let some things go undone.”

Councilmember Rhyan Lopez asked how much of the project budget the city would need to spend anyway on safety upgrades. Mayor Mary Lou Steward agreed with pushing the vote and councilmember Kerena Higgins said she would consider a modified revitalization project. 

“Quite frankly, I wasn’t looking at it as a fiscal conversation,” Wilbrecht said. “I was looking at it from a different point of view so I wasn’t prepared for the fiscal conversation and I apologize for that.”