DONNA — Officials here have abandoned a plan to install some 4.5 miles of sidewalks across the city, as well as more than $270,000 in federal grants meant to fund the project.
“In 2017, the project was estimated at $300,000. Due to inflation, the project is now at $1.3 million — that will more than likely go up when we go out for bid for the project,” said Donna Planning Director Chanel Borrego during Tuesday’s city council meeting.
“We decided to terminate the project — with your permission,” Borrego continued, calling the project unfeasible.
Just moments later, the council unanimously voted to terminate the project.
With that, the project came to an end without ever having a chance to start. Its end meant the city also had to give up a $272,000 federal grant it earned as part of a competitive application process in 2017.
Donna applied for the funds from the then-Hidalgo County Metropolitan Organization, which has since become the Rio Grande Valley MPO.
The city had planned to install sidewalks along North Main Street, Farm-to-Market 493, Scobey Avenue and South Avenue.
But after winning the award, the project lay dormant for years — long past the grant funding’s three-year expiration date.
About a year ago, efforts to revive the project ran into roadblocks when officials learned that laying sidewalk over two railroad crossings would increase costs significantly. And, as the planning director alluded to, so would making the sidewalks compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Nonetheless, Andrew Canon — executive director of the RGV MPO and responsible for distributing funding awards — made an impassioned plea to save the project during a June 27 council meeting.
“I certainly would hate to see $340,000 of free money given back to the federal government and not used,” Canon said during that June meeting. While more than $200,000 had been awarded by the federal government, an additional $68,000 in grant funding had come from state dollars.
Canon explained that the federal funding was meant to be put to use by 2020.
But neither he nor city officials offered any explanations as to why that never happened, nor why the issues associated with crossing the railroad tracks wasn’t discovered until after that deadline had lapsed.
When officials asked Canon then if the scope of the project could be changed — if the length of sidewalk to be installed could be reduced in order to reduce the additional cost burden Donna would have to pay out of its own budget — Canon said no.
The amount of grant funding wasn’t going to change, and the city had to execute the project as described in its grant application, Canon explained, lest it be unfair to the other cities who were not selected for the award in 2017.
But on Tuesday, interim City Manager Frank Perez said the scope of the project had changed during the years it had remained stagnant.
“As a matter of fact, we started with 4.5 miles for $8,000. Now we’re at 1.5 miles. They cut it almost twice, almost like two-thirds,” Perez said.
Despite losing the federal funding, Perez said Donna could take on the sidewalk project in the future — piecemeal as the budget allows.
“We already have the sketches ready, the engineering work already paid for and done,” Perez said.
“All that work is our work. If we own it, we’re gonna go ahead and do it on a per piece basis… half a mile, or a quarter mile” at a time, Perez said.
