St. Cloud, Osceola County, School District lock in FY 2024 budgets
Visitors to — and employees in —downtown St. Cloud have been familiar with the street closures of the last year or so as the city worked with construction crews on brick streetscape projects on Pennsylvania Avenue and, currently, 10th Street.
As the job should have been completed, but is ongoing with continued lane closures, the City Council pressed Cathcart Construction for answers at its Sept. 14 meeting.
“This project has been very frustrating for a lot of people. Downtown business owners have done everything they can to sustain and not go out of business,” Council Member Shawn Fletcher said, noting the city has gone to great lengths and expense to assist business owners in the corridor who have dealt with street closures for over a year during what was supposed to be a 120-day project. “We’re still dealing with the bricks. When will it be done, and if you’re not capable of completing the project, should we get someone else?”
Cathcart Construction President Matt Blanton said his company is capable, has been meeting with city engineers and has asked the brick manufacturer to come inspect what has been going on and delaying the project.
“Is it something from the alleyways with the large trucks pulling off? We’re looking to get answers,” he said. “We didn’t do anything different on Phase I.”
While many like the bricks, Fletcher said, he also noted communication with the company has been poor regarding the completion of the project. Council member Ken Gilbert noted numerous holes in the bricked streets in downtown, and Council Member Kolby Urban said he’s received calls from business owners aghast that streets continue to close.
“I drove down the Kissimmee lakefront and it’s as smooth as can be,” Urban said. “Why are we having issues? Why is this project different? This is not a product I’d be proud to show as a final product.”
Mayor Nathan Blackwell issued a message of, “Just get it done.”
“When the product hasn’t been up to par, take care of it, and we want you to take care of it in a timely manner,” he told Blanton. “We look forward to it being fixed and done right.”
At its next meeting on Sept. 28, the City Council will have a final reading of the city’s fiscal year 202324 budget, tentatively approved at $191.9 million, down from the previous year, mostly due to the transfer of water utility operations to Toho Water Authority.
City documents show the budget includes a 3 percent salary adjustment for City employees, and a step pay plan for members of the Police union. Six new city positions are included in the budget, including two police officers, a victim advocate, two sanitation drivers, and a sanitation customer service clerk.
Master plans for Chisholm Park and Hopkins Park and rebuilding Fire Station 32, a police department communications center are among $17.7 million in capital projects in the proposed budget.
The city’s millage rate (1 mill is $1 paid in property tax per $1,000 of the property’s assessed value) is slated to remain at 5.1128 mills.
Earlier in the week, the Osceola County Board of County Commissioners approved a $2.6 billion county budget for the 2024 fiscal year.
Prior to adding in capital projects like road expansions and new fire stations, the proposed budget stood at $1.693 billion. Those transportation projects — the Simpson Road widening is ongoing, Partin Settlement will begin next month, and Neptune Road, Boggy Creek Road and Poinciana Boulevard are very close to starting — added $731 million to the budget.
Opening fire stations on Boggy Creek Road and Calypso Cay, replacing a Poinciana station and one on Westside Boulevard, purchasing land for a new Fire Station 81 and securing new equipment added $22.8 million. The County was recently awarded a $5.4 million Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant in order to hire 21 more positions to fill the two new stations.
Other projects included a third year of Osceola Prosper, offering county graduates of the Class of 2024 free tuition at Valencia College or Osceola Technical College, a new Partin Settlement Road bridge over Florida’s Turnpike as part of the widening project, expansion and renovations at the Osceola Correctional Facility.
The Osceola County School District also approved a $2 billion budget that includes $897.8 million toward capital projects, $760 million in operating expenses, and spending down some of its surpluses.
