Moore council approves $5.8M 19th Street reconstruction grant application, several safety grants and multiple city purchases

The Moore City Council voted Oct. 20 to pursue several federally funded transportation safety projects and approved a series of budgeted equipment and vehicle purchases and fiscal housekeeping actions.

Council authorized staff to submit a surface transportation block grant application for reconstruction and realignment of the Southwest 19th Street and Broadway–Tower Drive intersection, a project staff estimated at $5,823,593 with a required city match of 20 percent — $1,164,718. Staff emphasized this action is an application step, not a guarantee of award.

Council also approved three companion ACOG-classified safety grant applications: LED arterial signage upgrades along the 19th Street corridor (estimated $417,949; safety designation means no local match), multi-polymer roadway striping at various city locations (estimated $919,939; no match), and radar vehicle detection and emergency preemption upgrades along the Telephone Road corridor (estimated $1,589,128; no match). City staff said the safety classification removes the local-match requirement for those applications.

On procurement, council awarded an $85,640 contract to Team Design PLLC to design improvements at the Riverwalk Drive and Southwest 19th Street intersection, a design staff said reflects recommendations from a prior traffic study and includes changes to Walmart access after staff reported a virtual coordination meeting with Walmart corporate representatives. The council also approved the low bid for eight fleet vehicles to Confidence Ford ($337,384) and related equipment items that accompany those vehicles.

Council approved several budgeted equipment purchases under state or cooperative purchasing contracts: in-car video systems and related gear from Motorola Solutions/WatchGuard ($29,790.40), safety equipment for outfitting eight fleet vehicles from Dana Safety Supply ($62,218.10), and eight mobile radios from L3/Harris Technologies ($45,386.96). Other approved items included two Club Car utility vehicles for parks ($26,306.16) and cargo containers for a fire-department training structure ($43,850).

Finance staff also presented an end-of-year recommendation to transfer $1,000,000 from the general fund into the reserve account; staff said the reserve balance is near $7 million. The council approved the transfer.

All motions recorded in the meeting for the items above passed on roll-call votes recorded in the transcript; when individual 'yes' responses were called the recorded responses were affirmative across the council for these items.

The council recessed the city meeting to convene companion Moore Public Works Authority, Risk Management, and Economic Development Authority meetings (routine consent dockets), reconvened council, and then moved later in the agenda to two ordinance adoptions (see separate article). The meeting concluded after an executive-session discussion about pending litigation and a motion directing staff to proceed as directed.