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Cincinnati's deferred maintenance problem is growing and the cost to catch up is 'staggering'

smale park
Bill Rinehart
/
WVXU
The Parks Department's top priority is to stabilize the river's edge at Smale Riverfront Park, where erosion threatens to create an unsafe shoreline.

Cincinnati officials say the cost of deferred maintenance for city-owned facilities is a staggering problem that grows worse every year.

Each city department this week identified its 10 most critical needs based on criteria like public and employee safety, accessibility, impact on the public, shovel readiness, and projects in under-served areas.

“Our general capital budget averages about $60 million. If you take this top 10 list from each of these departments, everything here totals over $260 million,” City Budget Director Andrew Dudas told a Council committee Tuesday. “These are just the top 10 — there's a much deeper list for all of these departments … we're probably looking at $400 million to $500 million total.”

It also doesn’t include the police department. Last year Council appropriated funds to commission a study for a “Public Safety Facilities Master Plan.” It will consider whether the city needs five police districts or if fewer would be appropriate, potentially avoiding the cost of replacing District 5 headquarters. The city put out a Request for Proposals for the study and is evaluating the responses now.

Just this week, Council approved funds to create a Facilities Master Plan for the health department as well.

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Assistant City Manager Billy Webber says the longer maintenance is put off, the more expensive the work becomes.

“Additionally, we've seen that time can cost us more money because of the escalating construction costs. Just one example is our street rehabilitation program, where in fiscal 21, we were at $330,330 per lane mile for street rehab, and now we're at $500,000 per lane mile in our last contract.”

In short, the need is huge, getting worse, and the city has nowhere near enough money to dig out of the hole.

Here is the top priority for each department and the estimated cost (see the full report below):

  • Recreation: Dunham Rec Center renovation (up to $10 million)
  • Parks: Smale Riverfront River’s Edge stabilization ($1,070,000)
  • Transportation & Engineering: Remove any components for Downtown lighting circuits from Duke manholes ($20 million)
  • Public Services: Cormany Garage renovation ($5 million)
  • Health: Price Hill Health Center air handler ($120,000)
  • Enterprise Technology Solutions: Remediation of antenna structure at the Emergency Communications Center ($100,000)

Another top priority project is replacing the Fleet Services garage, which was built in 1939. It’s ranked the second priority for Public Services and would cost an estimated $43.2 million.
“We're dealing with a capital budget of $60 to $65 million and our fleet garage will take $43 million, or two thirds of our capital budget,” said Council Member Jeff Cramerding. “So it is staggering.”

How do you tackle a long list of projects? Webber says a lot of the big ticket items require debt financing.

“What our year-to-year capacity is to borrow really depends on the tax base and what other existing debt is impacting that capacity,” he said. “We do have departments who try to aggregate capital resources over time, a little bit by little bit — maybe they have some leftover from other projects and they can try to piece together a larger pot.”

City officials are advocating for a big step to bring in more money for the capital budget: selling the city-owned Cincinnati Southern Railway.

The city has leased the CSR to Norfolk Southern for decades, bringing in about $25 million a year.

"The railroad is a is a critical critical funding source for our capital investment," Webber said. "Completing the sale [and] creating the infrastructure trust is really our best current opportunity to increase funding substantially without impacting or increasing taxes to generate more revenue than that way."

Officials say if the city sells to Norfolk Southern for $1.62 billion and put the revenue in an investment account, revenue from the interest will bring in more than double that.

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“There's been some people that have said the city of Cincinnati is going to have a windfall and be building all these new things, that's certainly not the case,” Cramerding said. “We’ve got more than enough to occupy those dollars just in getting caught up with our vast infrastructure. And even when the railroad sale is successful, it's certainly not going to be a silver bullet.”

The sale would have to be approved by Cincinnati voters. It could be on the ballot in November.

Local Government Reporter with a particular focus on Cincinnati; experienced journalist in public radio and television throughout the Midwest. Enthusiastic about: civic engagement, public libraries, and urban planning.