Aug. 24--Smoother streets or safer streets?

The Charlotte City Council will vote tonight on a plan to shift street resurfacing money to hire 75 new police officers.

The city's current street resurfacing budget is $14 million, which was supplemented earlier this year with an additional $4.5 million. The new money would allow the Charlotte Department of Transportation to resurface an additional 46 miles of streets, and to repave all streets every 12 years -- a city goal.

The quality of the city's streets has deteriorated over the last decade, due to tight budgets and the rising cost of asphalt.

But City Manager Curt Walton is recommending shifting the $4.5 million to allow hiring the additional officers, a request from Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Chief Rodney Monroe.

The city already plans in September to hire 50 additional officers using $8.5 million in federal stimulus dollars. If council members approve the money switch, another 50 officers would be hired in January and 25 more in April.

The new officers would increase the police force to 1,715, from 1,640.

Council members will also vote on whether to spend $4.5 millionto hire URS Corp. to design a streetcar line through central Charlotte. The city has socked away $8 million for the engineering work.

The proposed $500 million line would run from the Rosa Parks Transit Center off Beatties Ford Road to Eastland Mall, through uptown. It was originally a Charlotte Area Transit System project, but the city has now taken the lead in building it. The city doesn't know how it will pay to build the linesfor the streetcar, and it could be built in phases.

Some council members oppose spending the money on the streetcar design with no way yet to pay for construction.

Walton said he didn't anticipate any requests to shift the $4.5 million in streetcar funding to the street resurfacing fund.

"They could, but it would be just for one-time street resurfacing," Walton said.

In other action, the council will hear public comments on a proposal that would create new maintenance requirements for the hundreds of occupied and vacant commercial buildings.

The goal is to hold nonresidential property owners to maintenance standards similar to those required for residential property owners. An ordinance also would allow the city to intervene in neighborhoods troubled by vacant retail and commercial properties, including many along Independence Boulevard.

"Commercial buildings are allowed to deteriorate and affect the neighborhoods that surround them," said Susan Lindsay, who helped develop the proposed ordinance as chair of Charlotte East Community Partners Planning and Zoning Committee. "A nonresidential building code is one of the answers to that."

The state authorized municipalities to establish standards of fitness for nonresidential buildings in 2007.

While the city code currently requires vacant nonresidential properties to be secure, the new code could expand the city's enforcement power. Owners would be required to keep vacant and occupied commercial buildings secure, sanitary and safe.

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