And in the 806

State transportation officials surprised the city Tuesday morning with a $15 million I Owe You.

Steve Warren, an area director for the Texas Department of Transportation, said the department did not have the money - less than 38 percent of the project - for overpasses where Fourth Street and Slide Road meet Loop 289.

Department representatives had said as recently as Jan. 22 that construction would begin later this year. But Warren said he realized a week later that department officials working to cut costs had marked the Lubbock project expired.

That could lead to more local dollars committed to the interchange and another project. Or it could mean a top roads priority that already has caused the city some controversy will languish for several more years.

"I thought the $15 million was a done deal," Mayor Tom Martin said after the meeting. "It's a done deal, but they just haven't identified where they might get it in the next 10 years."

The Northwest Passage projects, more than $150 million in improvements to roads around Loop 289 and Slide Road and Fourth Street intersections, has always struggled for state financing.

Negotiations in 2008 led to the department's $15 million commitment toward a $40 million project to build an overpass for Slide Road at Loop 289.

Lubbock purchased in October a large, locally historic home that stands in the median of Slide Road north of Fourth Street to make room for a wider roadway as part of the project.

The city sold the home to local firefighter Mike Haggard in January for $500 - Haggard will spend hundreds of thousands more to move the building west of town.

But the Texas transportation commissioners, faced with a shortfall in gasoline taxes and federal highway contributions, canceled in late December the type of funding that supported the $15 million state pledge to the project, Warren said.

He did not realize he had not read the memo explaining the decision until last week, he said.

"They basically told us the funds we thought we were going to be getting aren't there anymore," Warren said. "The commitment is still there to that Northwest Passage project. I just can't give a time frame of when it will become available."

Lubbock and the department will instead pin their hopes for fast construction on the economic stimulus plan U.S. senators approved Tuesday.

The legislation that headed into conference committee included an estimated $1.5 billion in discretionary road funding for the state.

The metropolitan planning organization hoped to position the Northwest Passage project and another project widening West Loop 289 to six lanes for the money. The combined projects would cost $58 million - the city and planning organization would contribute more than half.

But that still relies on Congress and, later, transportation commissioners approving the funding. Without that money, the project could stay on hold for three years.

"All of these things are if, if, if, if," Martin said.