POCATELLO — The private developers involved with the Northgate project are asking the Pocatello City Council to consider reimbursing them for nearly $750,000 spent on infrastructure improvements to a road.

The request from the Chubbuck-based Portneuf Development and the Utah-based Millennial Development was presented to the City Council during a meeting at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon. After more than an hour discussing the request, the council unanimously decided to postpone agreeing to pay any of the amount until its regular meeting at 6 p.m. Nov. 1 at City Hall.

The work completed by Portneuf Development and Millennial Development was related to widening about 900 feet of Olympus Drive from the Chubbuck Road intersection to Jerome Street. That section of Olympus, located in both Bannock County and the city of Pocatello, was widened from two lanes to four, complete with right-of-way additions and upgrades to the power, water, sewer and communication utilities.

Buck Swaney of Millennial Development said the private developers did not originally agree to cover these improvements when the public-private partnership was originally created.

That unique partnership to generate the millions of dollars needed to pay for the Interstate 15-Siphon Road interchange involves Portneuf Development, Millennial Development, the cities of Pocatello and Chubbuck, Bannock County and the Idaho Transportation Department. The interchange, construction of which has not yet started, is needed for the Northgate development’s promised industrial parks and residential neighborhoods to become a reality.

Swaney said Millennial Development and Portneuf Development were tasked only with providing connecting road infrastructure from the intersection of Chubbuck Road and Olympus Drive north to the proposed site for the Interstate 15 interchange.

The Idaho Department of Transportation is expected to begin construction on the interchange next spring.

“If we followed our agreement exactly (Olympus Drive) would have went from four lanes to two lanes and back to four lanes,” Swaney said. “The city (of Pocatello) engineers weren’t willing to allow that, and so, as the engineering was completed that additional improvement was added on and we didn’t say stop. We didn’t need to improve that intersection. It just got added on and now we want the city to pick up that public improvement for its citizens.”

The additional cost for widening Olympus Drive was relayed from Swaney to Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad a few months ago when the improvements were underway, Swaney said.

“A couple of months ago I initially contacted the mayor about this change in cost and the desire to have the city participate in picking up the cost of that as it was outside of our contract scope and agreement,” Swaney said. “For some time we have been developing the final costs but I let the city know of the general magnitude of the costs a couple months ago and it has been in a deliberative process since.”

Although Blad was aware of the general cost of the additional improvements, he told the Journal that the work the private developers had completed was not relayed to the Pocatello City Council members because the exact amount for the improvements was not available until presented by Swaney on Tuesday.

Blad said that originally the Pocatello Development Authority was set to cover the additional cost for widening Olympus. But when the PDA said it didn’t have the money, the private developers decided to ask the City Council for the funds, Blad said.

The PDA is an independent public entity that has a wide range of authority to effectuate urban renewal projects in Southeast Idaho. Northgate is considered to be such a project.

Councilman Roger Bray was the first to object at Tuesday’s meeting to the city of Pocatello paying the additional cost to widen Olympus, saying that he didn’t “have a good feeling paying a bill that I did not participate in generating.”

Bray added, “I understand some of the explanation but we did not commit to this in any way. We did not commit the public funds which we would be using in any way and I need people to help me understand how we do this in a retroactive manner … rather than negotiating this from the get-go.”

Bray said that he has a financial responsibility to the taxpayers of Pocatello, not the developers involved in Northgate.

Pocatello City Council members, with assistance from city Development Engineer Merril Quayle and city Chief Financial Officer Joyce Stroschein, assigned each line item of the total $744,655 spent by the private developers to the entity that they believe should be required to reconcile the cost for the specific work completed.

Of the total amount, the council determined that $281,217 was related to roadway improvements on the portion of Olympus in the city of Pocatello, $235,950 was related to work on the section of Olympus in Bannock County, and $227,488 was for PDA-related work on Olympus.

Stroschein said the city of Pocatello has enough money it is general capital improvement fund to cover the nearly $750,000 sought by Portneuf Development and Millennial Development for widening Olympus.

Council member Beena Mannan voiced opposition to paying for work that was not completed in city limits and the overall discussion among the council transformed into covering only a percentage of the nearly $750,000.

Council member Rick Cheatum said the decision to try and parcel out each line item of the improvements was sidestepping the actual issue and implying that the city did not have trust in the private developers.

Blad said he agreed with Cheatum.

Swaney advised the council that once a new tax increment financing, or TIF, district is created for the Northgate area, the money would be reimbursed to the city.

Before any motions were presented to the council for a vote, Blad recommended that the city cover the entire amount as opposed to stretching the process out any longer by involving the county and breaking the entire amount up into subsections for different entities.

Cheatum made a motion to add an agenda item to the Nov. 1 City Council meeting to consider paying the entire amount. The motion died because nobody supported it.

Mannan made a motion to cover all of the amount except for the $235,950 associated with the work on the section of Olympus in Bannock County. That motion also died with no supporters.

The council ultimately approved a motion from Bray that added an agenda item to the Nov. 1 council meeting to allow the council to consider how much it could reimburse the private developers.

Council member Jim Johnston, who is also a real estate agent in Pocatello marketing retirement community home lots for Portneuf Development in Northgate, recused himself from voting or discussing the private developers’ funding request.