Mayor Greg Nickels has added $2 million to the city's Neighborhood Street Fund in his 2008 budget and that addition means the fund will grow to $10.1 million over the next three years.

"We listened carefully to neighborhoods, and expanding this program was clearly a top priority," Nickels said. "The Neighborhood Street Fund is an effective tool to help communities build sidewalks, traffic circles and other improvements to make their streets safer and their neighborhoods more livable."

The Neighborhood Street Fund was originally designed to fund small community-selected road projects, such as traffic circles, curb extensions, and streetscape improvements. This year, the city budgeted about $1.2 million for projects.

Under the voter-approved Bridging the Gap transportation levy, the city expanded the Neighborhood Street Fund to also fund larger projects, such as new sidewalks, center medians, and street resurfacing. Bridging the Gap includes $1.5 million annually for these larger scale projects and the mayor's proposed budget adds $1.5 million from the general fund to this program in 2008. In addition, the mayor's proposed budget shifts[KSK1] another $500,000 to the street fund for a total one-time add of $2 million. With this additional $2 million above the levy funding, the city now plans to invest $10.1 million in neighborhood transportation improvements over the next three years.

"Some neighborhoods want new sidewalks, so we are going to build new sidewalks," Nickels said. "Other neighborhoods want road improvements, so we are going to do that too. These investments directly answer the specific needs of each neighborhood."

[KSK1]Shifts or adds? I'd rather use add if we can...D3: the $500,000 is a shift, the $1.5 million is an add.

KSK: So where did it shift from??? Seems like we should say "... shifts another $500,000 to this fund from xxx."