The City of Meridian is gearing up for a busy summer with multiple infrastructure projects in the pipeline.

In a meeting Tuesday, the City Council moved several projects forward including addressing traffic lights on 8th Street, several projects at the wastewater treatment plant and more.

8th Street

Assistant Public Works Director Mike Van Zandt told council members the city has been awarded a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation Consolidation Appropriations Act for Highway Infrastructure Funding to make improvements along 8th Street.

The plan, Van Zandt said, is to use the funds to correct the geometry of intersections along 8th Street, which are all misaligned.

“What we’ll be able to do with these funds is to correct that and put in new traffic signals, new detection at each of these signalized intersections,” he said.

Van Zandt said the traffic signals, especially those at the intersection of 8th Street and 26th Avenue, have been installed too close to the road, which makes the turns too sharp. With the funds, he said, the city plans to install new traffic signals further away from the road that will allow drivers the room to safely make turns.

“If you travel that corridor frequently you know every one of these traffic signal poles has been hit multiple times,” he said.

The intersections are not the only need along the 8th Street corridor, Van Zandt said, and the city is also looking at other projects to address issues with drainage, curbs, sidewalks and utility poles that are too close to the road.

“All of these things are on the table, but the priority right now is to fix the intersections,” he said.

The grant requires the city put up 20% matching funds, about $600,000, to receive the federal funding. Van Zandt said about $250,000 had already been found in funds from the city’s 2020 bond. Public works staff is working on finding the rest.

Treatment Plant

The council on Tuesday also accepted a $477,963 bid from Norman Roofing to replace the roof on the city’s south waste water treatment plant. The funds will be paid for out of the consent decree.

Two other projects at the plant are moving forward as well, which will be paid for with American Rescue Plan Act funds. Waggoner Engineering’s David Ruhl said the Phase 1-A Rehabilitation project and a project to clean out the plant’s settling basin were both set to be covered by the city’s ARPA funds.

The Phase 1-A project is estimated to cost $3.5 million to $4 million, and the basin clean out was priced at $4.5 million to $5 million.

Meridian had previously been allocated about $8 million in ARPA funds, which were matched dollar-for-dollar by the state. Although the city had originally planned to use the funds on sewer repairs in the medical district and other ongoing projects, Ruhl said using ARPA dollars for some of those expenses was questionable.

“Some of the ones that were ARPA programmed, there was some incongruities, some missing information that put us at risk of being audited and not having the matching funds and having to pay those back,” he said.

Ruhl said the city definitely didn’t want to have to give back $8 million, so the decision was made to redirect those funds to the wastewater treatment plant, which is unquestionably allowed.

In other business, the City Council:

•approved a 60-day extension for Hemphill Construction on a 54-inch sewer main replacement. The line itself is complete, but rain has delayed some of the site reclamation work;

•accepted a $2,000 donation from CITGO to purchase fire safety equipment;

•accepted a $1,000 sponsorship from Mississippi Broadcasters LLC for the Juneteenth Heritage Celebration; and,

•authorized Community Development to apply for a Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program Grant from Mississippi Department of Transportation to build out the city’s electric vehicle charging capabilities.