The turnout may have been small in this off-year election but voters had their say. Union City voters March 21 overwhelmingly approved two bond referendum items totaling $12.5 million, designed to upgrade city streets and public safety infrastructure.

The streets infrastructure measure will secure $9.8 million for street upgrades. The measure passed 87 percent to 13 percent, or 186 votes to 29. The second measure, allocating $2.5 million to the Fire Department to construct a new fire station on the east side of I-85 and the purchase of two fire engines passed 191 votes to 26, or 88 percent to 12 percent. Residents turning out to vote represented only a small fraction of the city’s 6,461 registered voters.

City engineering firm Keck & Wood developed the assessment of street infrastructure needs. A total of 38.2 miles of city roads were rated and scored based on factors such as pavement conditions, shoulders, curb and gutter, lane width, road use classification and the number of house per one-tenth mile. Using the combined criteria, needed projects were assigned to three categories, worst-to-best. Categorized as tier 1, tier 2 and alternate projects, they included the entire 38.2-mile survey. Monetary considerations led to the placement of Tier 1 and 2 projects on the bond referendum while omitting the Alternate projects from current consideration. The projects established a linear-foot cost with a 15 percent contingency built in along with an allowance for inflation. Roads cost approximately $1 million per one mile of construction, engineers said.

The $2.5 million portion of the bond money allocated to Public Safety infrastructure would pay for the construction of fire station No. 3 on the city’s rapidly growing area east of I-85 and the purchase of two new fire engines. The need for a third station is increasingly evident considering the ever-growing volume of traffic along Ga. Highway 138 and Flat Shoals Road and the access points firefighters must use to respond to calls east of I-85, Chief Ken Collins said at an earlier bond referendum meeting. He said the need for a third fire station to cover the east side and portions of I-85 is evident from the number of calls, now totaling 30 percent of all calls in the city, that come from the east of I-85.

Collins said the referendum would also pay for the acquisition of a new engine known as a Quint. The vehicle is a 75-foot ladder truck capable of performing multiple missions. The Quint would be housed at station No. 3 and can both pump water and provide firefighters with access to taller buildings. The cost of the vehicle is $600,000, Collins said.

The third aspect of the firefighting portion of the referendum would be the replacement of engine No.2, a 1994 pumper with a lifetime of 10-15 years for front-line service. Engine No.2 currently responds to 68 percent of all calls and continues to experience increasing maintenance costs. The replacement cost is approximately $400,000.

An additional fire station and fire trucks has the effect of helping the city lower the ISO rating that directly affects fire insurance premiums to homes and businesses. Union City currently maintains an ISO rating of 4. The addition of the items included in the referendum and the city’s continued work on water pressure issues will help lower the rating to 3, thus reflecting lower premiums to property owners, said Collins.

Though the city is eligible to qualify for as much as $18 million in bonds, City Administrator Terrell Jacobs said limiting the initiative to just over $12 million provides flexibility for the future in case the city needs to go back to the bond market if the situation arises. Our best financial analysis at this time indicates that continued growth in the city along with reassessments will likely take care of the bond indebtedness, Jacobs said.

The balance of the bond amount will be allocated for bonding company administrative costs associated with servicing the 20-year bond.

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