AUGUSTA — Residents voted Tuesday to borrow $4.5 million so Augusta can buy a new fire truck, repair and repave city streets, make pedestrian safety improvements and repair the upper deck of the city’s downtown parking garage.
Results of the referendum show residents voted 314-127 to borrow for purchases or projects included in Augusta’s five-year capital improvement plan.
The plan includes buying a new fire truck for $625,000, to replace one from 1994. It also includes setting aside $200,000 this year and another $200,000 in each of the next two years to rebuild the city’s only public tennis courts, the Dr. Melendy Tennis Courts, which are six courts near the Buker Community Center at 22 Armory St.
The plan also includes spending $750,000 on a project that would eventually pay for repairs to the city’s parking garage off Dickman Street, just above downtown Water Street. Funding would allow the upper deck of the garage, which has been closed for a couple of years due to deterioration, to reopen.
In addition, the bond provides $35,000 this year and $135,000 in fiscal 2023 to engineer a proposed sidewalk on a section of Cony Road, in the area where three people, including a 1-year-old girl, were killed last May while walking the roadside, where there is no sidewalk.
It is also expected to fund other pedestrian safety improvement projects.
Street projects to be funded by the bond include $670,000 to rebuild Cushnoc Drive; $475,000 as the city’s 50% share to reconstruct Bog Road; $430,000 to rebuild Highland Avenue; and $300,000 to repave other city streets.
A total of 442 residents cast ballots in Tuesday’s single-item special election. Augusta has about 13,000 registered voters.
The bond proposal passed by large margins in three of the city’s four wards, but was defeated in Ward 3, where 61 residents voted against and 31 voted for borrowing the money.
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