Normal Town Mayor Chris Koos accused Councilmember Stan Nord of sensationalizing the Normal Uptown Underpass issue during the Normal council meeting on Monday night when Nord was questioning why there are two different budget estimates being bandied about by the town.
Previous to April the town maintained the budget for the project was $23.9 million. During April the town updated its projected cost to $29.9 million citing construction costs increases due to the impacts of Covid-19 and other world issues on the economy.
The town sent an application to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in April documenting the $29.9 million estimate and requesting $6.00 million more dollars for the project. However on the council report for last night’s meeting the town reverted to using the $23.9 million number.
“Mr. Nord if I may,” Koos interjected, “I’m just going to have to take a breath here. You are trying to sensationalize this whole issue. We have no idea what this is going to cost until we bid it and it’s going to be this council’s responsibility to respond to that, to change the scope of the project to find additional and federal state funding if it’s available to address construction.”
Mayor Koos stated this right after Nord had said, “We are in a spot like, we are building a house. We know we can only afford so much for the construction cost. We have just learned that it is going to cost significantly more. Do we continue putting money into designing a house that we can’t even find a way to pay for?”
After Koos interjected, Nord continued and went on to say,” I don’t know it this is ethical, if there is anything wrong with telling the federal government it’s going to cost $6 million dollars more than what we are telling our local tax payers.”
Nord said the town is giving two different numbers based off of the audience.
“You’re misrepresenting something to someone and is the local taxpayer government …is that the one being manipulated or is it the federal government they are manipulating to get more money out of the federal government,” said Nord. “Either way it’s totally not right and for him to say it is sensationalizing… I don’t know if its sensationalizing or simply just calling out that somebody is being misled.”
Nord says this is destroying credibility and says he is unsure about the legal implications and suggested Brian Day, the town attorney, step up and not represent the council because of the “lie.”
During the meeting town manager Pam Reece explained the difference in the estimates this way, “The $23.9 million is reflected in the adapted budget that town council adopted for this particular fiscal year.”
“And the action in April whereby we requested FRA consideration of additional funding was because the Federal Railroad Administration notified us that they had some unallocated grant dollars and that it would be reasonable for us to ask for more money in anticipation of increased project cost,” Reece said.
In an interview after the meeting Cities 92.9 asked Reece why she didn’t just show the $29.9 million in the council report. She responded, “We are sharing what council has formally approved. We haven’t officially amended the budget because we haven’t finished design yet.”
Reece admitted the two different budget numbers being used for different purposes at this time may be confusing to the public.
