It’s been one of the top reasons Burlington officials have pushed to build the Champlain Parkway: the long-stalled project would be cheaper to finish than to abandon.
But a group suing to stop the project has contested that claim, asserting that a change in federal law has freed the city from a requirement to pay back money the federal government has already spent on the project.
The repayment would only occur if the city fails to complete the 25-mph north-south thoroughfare that would connect downtown Burlington to Interstate 189. But as the project’s cost increases, opponents say that killing the project would be cheaper than bringing it home.
In emails to VTDigger, city officials dismissed the arguments made by the Pine Street Coalition but declined to address specific questions about the coalition’s claims.
Since the project was first conceived in the 1960s, the Champlain Parkway has mostly been paid for by the Federal Highway Administration. But that money came with some strings attached — namely, it had to result in construction of a new road within 20 years.
After several extensions, federal officials issued a warning in September 2021 that the city would need to show progress on building the parkway or pay back the funds doled out by the federal government for the project — a sum of roughly $45 million.
At the time, project organizers — including the city’s director of public works, Chapin Spencer — doubled down on the need to push the project forward, citing the impending penalty.
Spencer mentioned a $45 million payback if the project did not succeed as recently as an April 11 City Council meeting.
But a few months after the federal government’s warning went out last year, the Pine Street Coalition argues, the highway administration’s authority to claw back a significant portion of the $45 million evaporated.
Because of a provision in the mammoth infrastructure package Congress passed in November 2021, the city no longer had to pay for many of the project’s costs, according to the coalition’s lawyer, Cindy Hill. The only eligible expense federal officials could demand was the money they forked over to buy the land that was slated to host the parkway, Hill said.
In a memo, lawyers hired to defend Burlington in the lawsuit appeared to rebut Hill’s argument, saying that the highway administration has been relying on a law separate from the one repealed by the infrastructure act to demand its money back if necessary.
That separate law, however, applies only to the purchase of “real property interests.” In its September 2021 warning to the city, federal officials said the $45 million sum included expenses such as “consultant efforts, environmental documents” and “preliminary engineering.”
And in a footnote of that memo, the lawyers also said the city “may have arguments regarding the precise categories and amounts of repayment required” if the parkway isn’t finished, but stated that those questions exceeded the memo’s scope.
In a text, Spencer raised doubts about whether the infrastructure act would retroactively apply to projects that predated its passage. Federal officials told him “it is not at all clear” that preliminary engineering costs would be waived in the event of the parkway’s demise, he said.
Spencer, as well as spokespeople for the state Agency of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, did not answer inquiries from VTDigger asking how much of the $45 million was spent on acquiring property for the parkway.
In an interview, Hill said she could not estimate the exact cost of the property acquisitions, but said it was “a very small fraction” of the overall costs.
Hill called the city’s promotion of the $45 million number subsequent to the change in federal law a “troubling misunderstanding.”
“It appears, from where I’m sitting and where my clients are sitting, like that troubling misunderstanding may have influenced decisions that the City Council made to proceed with the current construction,” Hill told VTDigger.
The City Council green-lit the project’s $41 million first phase in April, which would create a new road from Home to Lakeside avenues and revamp Pine Street from Lakeside to Kilburn Street.
In an interview, City Councilor Gene Bergman, P-Ward 2, said he would be “very disappointed” if the city knew it would need to repay far less than $45 million to kill the parkway and did not share that information with the council.
“I would need to understand why they took that position to be able to feel as comfortable as I should be with the information coming out,” he said.
Still, Bergman said he does not regret voting to approve the project’s first phase, arguing that it would revitalize the South End’s infrastructure without causing potential harm to the low-income King and Maple neighborhood.
Bergman is not alone in his concern for the parkway’s potential to affect the King and Maple neighborhood. While federal officials say the project would bring more benefits than harm to the area, the Pine Street Coalition’s lawsuit challenges those findings.
To avoid the neighborhood, city officials have proposed the “Railyard Enterprise Project,” which would divert parkway traffic toward Battery Street. That project is in its early stages, and officials hope to complete it alongside the second phase of the Champlain Parkway.
Bergman and other city councilors have vowed to vote against the project’s second phase unless the Railyard Enterprise Project also goes forward — even if the city has to pay back the federal government.
“I will not support dumping all of that traffic into that neighborhood,” Bergman said, “regardless of whether the number is 2 (million dollars) or whether the number is 45 (million dollars).”
For now, the city is allowed to clear trees and install stormwater systems along the land that is slated to host the parkway. That’s all the work it can do until a federal judge decides on the Pine Street Coalition’s lawsuit, something the judge said would occur by April 15, 2023.