The Town of Normal has adopted an updated six-year capital improvement plan, following a unanimous vote of the town council on Monday.
The Community Investment Plan [CIP] reserves funding for 426 different projects — from the in-progress Uptown underpass plan to sewer and water infrastructure repairs — with a $199.3 million price tag though 2030. That’s slightly smaller than the $208 million plan approved last year.
The plan approved Monday does not commit any funds for these projects.
“We've had a bit of a struggle, like all municipalities across the nation, of revenue. We've had inflation, high inflation, we've seen revenue drop back significantly,” said Andrew Huhn, town finance director. “So we solved a lot of that problem in terms of revenue shortfall from planned revenue through kind of a pull back of capital. And that's usually the first step in trying to manage budget issues, is to look at capital operations and so forth.”
The town's website has an interactive map showing all capital projects listed in the CIP budget. Some, like the underpass — which the map currently marks as a $26 million project — are subject to change based on future bids for the projects.
“The nature of capital project spending can be up and down quite a bit,” said Huhn, referring to the year-to-year changes in a CIP. “If it's down, it could be simply a timing thing in terms of a bunch of projects fell off that were significant and huge and got completed, which we'd like to see happen. And year six didn't quite come out the same robust amount, but it kind of all evens out in the end.”
Also Monday, the council heard an update from John Burkhart, director of the water department. He said he expects Normal to be done with replacing lead and galvanized pipes by the end of 2025.
