Mid-Ohio Valley Foundations – Community: Major projects on horizon for Marietta

MARIETTA -- While Marietta officials focus day to day on projects and developments on city streets or at municipal buildings, they are also looking toward what major projects and developments could be on the horizon.

City Development Director Geoff Schenkel works closely with city and county officials to apply for and receive grants in order to complete the next steps of various projects. The federal Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (R.A.I.S.E.) grant is for planning and capital investments that support roads, bridges, transit, rail, ports or intermodal transportation, according to the United States Department of Transportation. The grant supports the Enrich Marietta plan for the C.R.O.S.S. (Connecting Residents on Safer Streets) Marietta Project that will be working toward renovating streets downtown, on the Butler Corridor, as well as parking.

"C.R.O.S.S. Marietta will be a great working partnership between the city, county and (Marietta) College," said Schenkel. "We will be working with American Structure Point as our contractor. It's a massive undertaking."

The R.A.I.S.E. grant will be used in conjunction with several other grants such as the T.A.P. (Transportation Alternative Program) grant, the Our Town grant, a placemaking grant and National Endowment for the Arts grants. One of the big projects to come out of grant access will be the city's work to connect Harmar and surrounding parts of Washington County with downtown Marietta.

"We're focused on making our local dollars go further by relying on partnerships during these projects as well as using outside funds," Schenkel said. "Like with the emergency shelter (for homeless individuals or those who have been displaced in an emergency), we're using HUD and we're applying our spending wisely."

He said the city will partner with the county, Buckeye Hills Regional Council, Ohio Department of Transportation District 10 and others on projects such as the new Active Transportation Plan, that is still being reviewed before adoption by Marietta City Council.

"We've been reviewing it, and we're taking the suggestions from it and making those a priority," said Schenkel. "We saw ways to redesign our transportation during our pilot program with GreenCab and will be working with CABL (Community Action Bus Lines), Reimagine Marietta, and the WWW (Wood-Washington-Wirt Interstate Planning Commission) plan to have a more connected core to the city. We will be improving delivery and education."

Schenkel also hopes to provide a reference guide that includes all the upcoming projects through grant funding to the administration, City Council and citizens.

"It's been so long since the city engaged in comprehensive planning, and through this guide we can be able to understand one another," Schenkel said. "I'm working on getting it out ASAP within a month. That way the engineers and the citizens can be on the same page."

Marietta's leaders are also striving to reexamine the way they spend money for those projects and how they can make their dollars go further for city employees and residents.

Councilman Mike Scales, 1st Ward, chairman of the Finance Committee recently held an Audit Committee meeting with Marietta City Treasurer Cathy Harper, Auditor Sherri Hess and Budget Director Mitch Dimmerling to discuss the city's finances. The city had requested a performance audit from the state, and the report said that "Marietta does not engage in multi-year financial forecasting, and the City's recent declining financial condition could be improved by utilizing multi-year financial forecasting and enhanced financial communication."

Scales said during the Audit Committee meeting that Dimmerling was exploring a program that would create a budget for the next three fiscal years based on previous fiscal data.

"The program would pull out any line items that we need to drill down on and fix them," said Scales. "It was recommended in order to fix our capital improvement and general funds."

Hess and Harper said an additional fund could be established that would be similar to but not technically a "rainy day fund." It would not be locked in to any rates or contract and could be used for emergencies. They also stated that 2023 was a catch-up year for many of the city's finances, although most funds stayed within their budgets and the finances were better than how they started.

"We'll get a more accurate picture of what our forecasting will and should be for our upcoming budgets with the performance audit," Scales said. "Thank you to Hess, Harper and Dimmerling for their work. With them we're going to find our deficiencies and efficiencies within our finances."

Gretchen Dowler can be reached at gdowler@newsandsentinel.com.