More than a half million in seed money for a new police station, $100,000 to design a new courthouse, $630,000 to complete the Rubber City Heritage Trail, a $1.2 million shiny new fire truck for a new firehouse in Middlebury, $20,000 to build a park at the partially demolished Rubber Bowl and another $47 million in annual debt payments.

These and more items await Akron in the 2019 capital budget, which Mayor Dan Horrigan’s planning staff presented Monday to City Council. The annual spending plan for construction projects and equipment purchases will get two closer examinations on Jan. 14 and 28 at City Hall. Then Council will recommend changes before likely passing a final plan in an appropriations bill in February.

The yearly capital budget is a collection of public infrastructure projects within Akron city limits paid for by state, federal, local and private sources, from municipal income tax dollars to regional grants and line items in the state budget. Compared to last year’s budget plan, which was released 11 months ago but is not yet uploaded to the city’s website, state and federal funding are up this year while city and private spending are down.

The bulk of the city’s local funding, accounting for $97 million of the $341 million in overall spending, comes from income tax collections ($51 million), sewer fees ($14.6 million), water fees ($7.4 million) and new borrowing ($14 million). All told, the mayor is planning to spend $11.5 million more in local funding than he set out to spend in 2018.

Borrowing remains high for a court-mandated sewer project, now half-done and inching one multi-million dollar project after another toward completion in 2027. The city plans to apply for $145.2 million (which it considers state funding) in new low-interest loans from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, about $8 million less than it borrowed last year.

The 2019 capital budget projects that spending on water and sewer work will consume more than half of all money — whether federal, state, locally or privately sourced — spent on all public infrastructure projects in Akron for a third straight year.

The mayor is prioritizing the attraction of businesses and jobs with support for a private development at the old Rolling Acres Mall site and a jobs hub with county backing in Firestone Business Park. Last year, Horrigan trimmed $10 million from the city’s economic development budget. He’s proposing to put that much and a little bit more back in this year.

This will be the first full year of collecting an extra 0.25 percent income tax to fix city roads and support fire and police. The new tax was first collected in February 2018.

From this year’s tax collection, there’s $100,000 set aside to design a city courthouse at the Ocasek Building, which state lawmakers voted in December to give to the city. Four million dollars, all but $250,000 borrowed, will finish Fire Station 2 in Middlebury, plus $475,000 in improvements for a new Fire Station 4 on Thornton Avenue and $150,000 to design and start building a new Fire Station 12 on West Market Street in Wallhaven. The Middlebury firehouse will get a new $1.2 million fire truck in the first draft of the mayor’s spending plan.

Police Chief Ken Ball is setting aside $550,000 from his cut of the increased income tax to build a new police station when the city empties the Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center, probably in the next three years. There’s also $160,000 in one last round of body-worn cameras, $560,000 for the city’s new computer-aided dispatch system, $640,000 for an integrated system to alert firehouses and $2.9 million to replace obsolete, miscellaneous fire and police equipment.

And there will be more smooth roads this time next year. Horrigan is adding $500,000, most of it through borrowing, to the annual resurfacing program for residential streets in Akron. The city plans to spend close to $4 million on local streets in 2019, or five times more than it spent in 2016.

Finally, Barberton is chipping in $50,000 and Summit County $250,000 to the $1.6 million borrowed by Akron to improve the roads, sidewalks and more at the former Rolling Acres Mall site on Romig Road, preparing the industrial space for a mystery developer building a $100 million facility that will produce $30 million in annual payroll. The improvements along Romig Road are largely funded by $9.1 million from the Ohio Public Works Commission.

Reach Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.