Sun Valley city officials last week announced that the city seems likely to receive a $3 million grant that could make a massive dent in the cost of replacing the broken traffic signals at one of the city’s most traveled intersections with a roundabout.
But the news came with a caveat: Sun Valley must suspend its planning on the roundabout until 2025.
It all comes down to the timing of the potential funding award. Sun Valley submitted its grant application in January to Idaho’s Local Highway Technical Assistance Council, the agency that manages the allocation of federal dollars for transportation projects in the state, the Express previously reported. The grant would help fund the installation of a roundabout at the intersection of Sun Valley, Saddle and Dollar roads, an intersection that has been functioning as a four-way stop since its traffic signals malfunctioned in late 2022.
The highway council’s grant committee then met in February. It awarded Sun Valley’s roundabout project the first-place ranking, Sun Valley City Administrator Jim Keating said during a presentation to the City Council on Thursday, April 4.
“This suggests strongly that the full request of $3 million will be awarded, but it hasn’t been awarded yet,” Keating said. “We have received no formal communication from LHTAC or any of these committees, and there’s still a ways to go in this process.”
That’s because there’s still a few pending approvals. The board of the Idaho Transportation Department now needs to approve the grant, Keating said, a decision it should tackle during a summer meeting. If all goes well there, more federal approvals would be required in the fall. That means the city is in for a roughly nine-month wait before it could get access to any cash. Keating said he expects that the City Council would not be asked to formally accept the potential grant until February 2025—and any expenses before then would not count toward the city’s required match to the federal grant.
The Sun Valley City Council in November authorized a contract with Ketchum engineering firm S&C Associates to design the roundabout, the Express previously reported, a process that generated an estimated total cost of $3,947,000. If the city receives the full $3 million grant, it would then need to source the remaining $947,000.
S&C Associates co-owner Doug Camenisch told the Express in a Tuesday call that the $947,000 city contribution includes a $220,200 match. That means that, upon accepting the hypothetical grant, the city would commit to pitching in at least $220,200 of its own money, though it is still responsible for locating the remaining funds. Any roundabout-related expenses would not count toward that match until after the council accepted the grant.
“We would need to suspend our current work with our great partners at S&C—at their recommendation—which is painful, to be frank,” Keating said, “and then re-engage pending the council’s accepting of the grant in February.”
If Sun Valley receives the grant and if the council accepts it in 2025, the city would then follow a set of federal guidelines all the way from roundabout engineering to roundabout development, Keating said.
Camenisch told the council on Thursday that the full $3 million in funding would likely be spread out over two or three fiscal years as the project proceeds. Funding for the construction phase of the project would not become available until 2027, he estimated.
“We don’t get three million bucks on day one,” Sun Valley Mayor Peter Hendricks said.
Camenisch said Thursday that the city will be able to learn more details about the funding when the state Local Highway Technical Assistance Council submits its recommendations to ITD’s board.
“The only thing that we know with certainty at this point is that the LHTAC council has accepted the selection committee’s rankings,” he told the council. “And, in its rankings, your project is No. 1.”
Sun Valley City Clerk Nancy Flannigan confirmed in a Tuesday email responding to questions from the Express that the city is pausing its work with S&C “until we receive formal communications on the grant and better understand any requirements associated with the grant.”
Flannigan said the city has no other plans in place for the intersection in the meantime until a possible construction date. 
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@PB - "Effective" is a multiple use adjective, thus I shouldn't question your use of the word. Perhaps, but what's occurring now is the four registered Republicans on the SV Council - Saks excepted - want $3 M of federal funds to "enhance" the City's entrance to benefit one of the largest and most successful real property companies in the West, a company based and controlled by management based in Utah, which additionally will necessarily sell to SV City additional four corner property necessary to accommodate the corner property necessary for safe vehicular, bike and pedestrian traffic. The additional amount owed for the estimated $4 M one-lane traffic circle, whatever it may be, will be paid by property owners and others paying local taxes assessed by the city council, thereby adding to the $27 M cost of the recent Elkhorn Road and Trail Creek Road bond issue that this same folks nurtured recently for access to the Sun Valley Golf Course and it's related development of the hillside properties lying just north of it...also owner by Sun Valley Resort, Inc. May I suggest another adjective instead of yours? OUTRAGEOUS!
SV. Now’s you’re chance to stop this absolute waste of money. Demand that your city council cancel both the $1M your going to waste on the roundabout and the millions you’re going to waste redoing Festival Meadows, another project that only your mayor wants. You have to admit that if you can afford these two projects that you are way over taxed.
A free option would be to leave the perfectly functioning and efficient 4 way stop. Thank you.
It is amazing how much more effective the Sun Valley Council is than Ketchum’s. They are getting a roundabout where we don’t really need one, while the Ketchum mayor whiffed at getting one where we do need one.
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