Funding

As a small rural community, City of Osawatomie officials are committed to leveraging project funding opportunities to the fullest extent. Infrastructure projects often involve complicated combinations of property or sales tax collections, issuing debt, temporary notes, loans, and grant dollars from a variety of public and private sources. Large-scale projects must be planned years in advance and often go through multiple rounds of revision and changes in scope to improve project viability or affordability.

As the single largest street rehabilitation project in the community's history, the planned reconstruction of 6th Street from Lincoln Avenue to Kelly Avenue has an impressive total project cost at an estimated $6.2 million. Of that project total, $1.3 million is allocated for the replacement and relocation of the corridor's water main leaving roughly $4.9 million in costs solely for the street project. City officials worked tirelessly throughout 2021 and 2022 to gain additional funding sources in support of the project and were thrilled to receive $1.5 million from Kansas Department of Transportation's (KDOT) Cost Share grant program. Those funds are being combined with $500,000 from Miami County's Road and Bridge sales tax, which is a recurring fund annually distributed to one of the four major communities in the county. Of the remaining $2.9 million, $400,000 is covered by the City of Osawatomie's voter-approved sales tax dedicated to street repair and $2.5 million in temporary notes.

Another KDOT grant program, "Transportation Alternatives," awarded the City an additional $1.5 million toward developing two new bicycle/pedestrian trails or shared use pathways throughout the community. One of these pathways, temporarily named the South Levee Loop, intersects with the southern portion of the 6th Street reconstruction project and incorporates larger-scale pedestrian improvements. More information on the Transportation Alternative grant can be found on our website.

What's Next?

Once the design was completed and funding for the anticipated project costs had been secured, City staff and engineering consultants invited interested contractors to submit sealed bids. Officials opened those bids on September 29th, 2023, and presented a recommendation to the Osawatomie City Council on October 12th, 2023, at a regular meeting of the governing body. Based on the bids received and the engineer's estimates, as shown in this table, City officials recommended the City Council approve a resolution awarding the project to Killough Construction, Inc. from Ottawa, Kansas, for a base bid of $6,182,283.33 and including both alternates. Council voted to approve the resolution, and City staff coordinated a pre-construction meeting with the awarded team(s) in early November 2023.

The full-depth reconstruction of 6th Street is slated to break ground in very early spring 2024 and is aiming for substantial completion before January 2025. Stay tuned into construction updates HERE.

Project Contact(s)

Michele Silsbee
Director of Public Works
[email protected]
(913) 755 - 2146 x231

Bret Glendening
City Manager
[email protected]
(913) 755 - 2146 x101