LEWISTON — City councilors on Tuesday added a $200,000 shed to hold off-season Public Works equipment and door locks for classrooms to a capital project wish list.

No member of the public attended a public hearing on the city’s five-year Capital Improvement Plan at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

For 2013, the plan calls for continuing the city’s effort to demolish old tenements downtown, buying new Financial Department software and working on the city’s Franklin Pasture athletic complex.

The plan calls for $7.3 million in city borrowing to pay for the work in the 2013-14 budget, $1.2 million in General Fund spending and $18 million paid with federal and state grants or shared with other cities.

Councilors are scheduled to vote on the plan Feb. 19.

City Administrator Ed Barrett said the city must build a shed to hold off-season Public Works equipment now that Casella Solid Waste will take over and lease the shed near the municipal landfill. That shed is currently used to hold mowers, street sweepers and other equipment during the winter and snowblowers during the summer.

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The new shed will be a 60- by 90-foot pre-engineered metal building with garage doors on both ends built near the city’s Public Works operations center on River Road.

Another $110,000 will be used to build a roof covering for four trash bins at the dump.

Barrett said the School Department requested an additional $104,000 to install locks on 325 classroom doors.

“They currently cannot lock the doors from within the classroom, and this will change that,” Barrett said. “This is a security measure.”

Councilors reviewed the overall capital plan last month.

It outlines $145 million in road and building construction, renovations and equipment purchases over the next five years, with $62.5 million spent from city sources — General Fund money and bond issues. The rest would be paid with state or federal revenues.

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It also sets aside $2.5 million in 2013 to demolish Bates Mill No. 5. City councilors have come down in favor of doing away with the saw-tooth-roofed building at the corner of Main and Lincoln streets, despite community efforts to preserve it and find new uses.

The capital plan calls for Lewiston to pay $40,000, its share for two new buses for the Citylink bus system. Auburn would pay another $40,000 and the Federal Transit Agency would pay the remaining $320,000 for those buses.

The plan also calls for building a $450,000 facility to wash large vehicles, $200,000 for continued renovations at the Lewiston Memorial Armory, road projects on Walnut Street, Main Street, sidewalks along College Street, general road maintenance, streetlights and Public Works equipment. All told, the city would spend about $11 million on capital projects.

The School Department would spend about $666,500 in capital projects at Franklin Pasture, especially at Don Roux Field and the track surface, and at Martel, Geiger and Lewiston High school buildings.

The city had $167 million in outstanding debt as of Dec. 31 2012. That includes $58 million for the city, $34.6 million for the schools and $39.5 million for Lewiston’s water, sewer and storm-water utilities.

Debt payments, about $8.5 million in 2014, amount to about 13.1 percent of the city’s operating budget.

staylor@sunjournal.com


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