SALISBURY — The Salisbury City Council received an update on Tuesday on capital projects happening throughout the city. While many of the projects were on schedule, two projects came in significantly over budget, meaning the council members may have to reprioritize the project schedule and funding.

The projects in question were the restoration of the windows on the city hall and city office buildings and the construction of restrooms at City Park and Kelsey Scott Park.

“The other thing you’re hearing from (Transportation Director) Wendy (Brindle), the bathrooms are about $100,000 over budget and the windows are about $225,000 over budget, and we’re not done yet. So we’re going to have to bring this back and have council set some priorities on some of these projects, whether it’s the bathrooms or windows or some other things we have to hold off in order to be able to fund the other projects,” said City Manager Jim Greene Jr.

After Greene’s comments, Mayor Karen Alexander asked Greene and the rest of the city staff to put together a recommendation of how the city council should prioritize the various projects throughout the city.

Brindle, who provided the capital projects update along with Public Works Director Chris Tester, said that staff would be in a good position to provide those updates once the city had officially received quotes.

Council Member Harry McLaughlin also asked if the staff could put together a report outlining deadlines for possible grant funding that could be put toward some of the projects as well as the data on how many people would be directly affected by each of the capital projects.

The city hall windows came in over budget for several reasons, but Brindle and Greene said that the main reason was the city having to change its plans when the Salisbury Historic Preservation ruled against replacing the windows in favor of the city restoring the historic features.

“It’s a more sustainable practice to not replace windows, because you’re not sending something to landfill, and that’s why HPC chose the way they chose,” said Tester.

The current city hall building was constructed in the early 1960’s, according to online property records. The city office building, which served as the original city hall, was built by the late 1920s, according to a National Register of Historic Places inventory form.

Brindle said that the city was struggling to find contractors for the restoration project, and staff was currently revising the scope of the request for proposals in order to drum up interest after already revising it multiple other times. The restrooms, on the other hand, had simply run over the city’s estimated price of $100,000.

One other project that had changes in the update was the Grants Creek Greenway, which was projected to run from near Wiltshire Village south along the creek’s path and in between the two national cemetery properties, until it tied into the existing greenway at Kelsey Scott Park. The city was unable to receive permission from the National Cemetery Association to utilize the southwestern corner of the Salisbury National Cemetery Annex, which Brindle said was only a present issue and staff would continue to monitor the possibility. Instead, the greenway will run west and follow East Colonial Drive down to Old Wilkesboro Road before connecting with the current greenway trail at Kelsey Scott Park.

Most of the other projects had not seen major changes and were still mostly on schedule, including as the median on Brenner Avenue and the roundabout at the Milford Hills Road intersection, the new fire station on Mahaley Avenue, the Ellis Street bridge repairs and the Kessler Mill clean up and redevelopment.