City's sidewalk projects growing

The state’s Transportation Improvement Board came to town and Grand Coulee’s city council liked what they heard at their meeting Tuesday night.

Executive Director Stevan Gorcester told the council that the TIB would be interested in assisting the city repair or replace sidewalks on Main Street and on Federal Avenue at a cost far beyond what a present grant is for.

The TIB had okayed a sidewalk on Spokane Way, but when members found out that Center School was moving, the project was nixed.

The city hurried and came up with a project to improve sidewalks on Federal Avenue, but when that hit the TIB, they wanted to reconsider.

That’s when four from the agency decided to come to town and see what projects they could come up with.

The original grant was for just over $200,000.

Gorcester said that the scope of things the TIB would like to help do might come to $430,000. And he suggested that other small projects such as paving or chip sealing might be also done when a contractor was already working in the area. He said it was his experience that doing it then would save a considerable amount of money.

“We are using Grand Coulee as a study area,” Gorcester told the council. He explained that the TIB works with 165 small cities and towns in the state.

“We don’t like the money to drive the project, but the project drive the money,” he told the council.

The TIB team also had two engineers from Gray & Osborne in tow for the Grand Coulee study.

Gorcester stated that the project would repair or replace most of the bad sidewalks on Main Street and Federal Avenue and that this could be done all at the same time. Some wheelchair ramps could be done at a later date, in a year or two, he stated.