CLAREMONT — The City Council voted 9-0 this week to appropriate $1.24 million to repave Washington Street, a heavily traveled four-lane road that runs through the heart of the city’s commercial district.

Wednesday’s vote came more than a year after the council first began discussing how to pay for repaving 2.3 miles of the city’s main commercial street.

The vote to take money from the city’s unassigned fund balance for the project followed a presentation of the city’s financial audit for the period ending June 30, 2023, which cited an a unassigned fund balance of $5.3 million.

That figure was sufficient for the council to feel comfortable using a portion for the paving project instead of bonding or putting it in the operating budget.

The city has been working toward building up the fund balance and not using it to offset tax rate increases, City Manager Yoshi Manale said.

“It is something we have been working on to get Claremont in a position where we can spend money on infrastructure work without burdening the taxpayer,” he said.

The decision had been delayed until the final audit report — presented by auditor Tammy Webb with the firm Vachon Clukay & Company of Manchester — because some councilors said they were concerned that the unassigned fund balance might not be equal to or greater than at least 5% of the budget, which is the minimum amount recommended.

After deducting the Washington Street project, the fund balance will be around $4 million, which is roughly 20% of the $19.6 million budget approved in June.

The bid from Pike Industries of Belmont, N.H., will remain valid through the entire project, which will begin in the spring, Public Works Director Alex Gleeson told the council. The road will be repaved beginning at the Puksta Bridge, where Broad Street becomes Washington Street, and continue out past Home Depot to the intersection of Old Claremont Road. With four lanes, there are close to 14 miles of pavement that will be resurfaced, Gleeson said.

The council’s first plan to pay for most of the paving was for a special assessment of businesses on Washington Street. In October, 2023, the council approved a recommendation from Manale to revise the city’s special assessment ordinance, to eliminate any required consent from property owners and instead gave the city manager sole authority to propose a special assessment.

Earlier this year, Manale proposed an assessment on Washington Street property owners that would cover about three-quarters of the cost, or more than $900,000. His reasoning was that the businesses would be the primary beneficiaries of the newly paved street.

But the council dropped the proposal at a public hearing in June. Several business owners, who had received letters from the city with the assessment they would be charged, protested against paying for something all motorists would use. They also criticized a traffic study used to determine how much each business would pay, based on car counts they said were inaccurate.

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.