The city of Madison appears close to moving forward on building the $37 million ramps for westbound traffic on I-565 and creating an expressway for customers in Alabama’s largest city to access the isolated Town Madison development.

The council is poised to vote next month on a funding plan that will finance the long-sought after flyover ramps to flow traffic from Huntsville to the retail and restaurant businesses in the sprawling mixed-use development that’s also home to Toyota Field – the baseball home of the Rocket City Trash Pandas which also serves as an event center for the Madison area.

Related: As Town Madison celebrates I-565 ramp opening, interchange looks toward conclusion

The key piece in the project is the plan for Madison to annex the Publix at Clift Farms and access sales tax revenue from the grocery store to help pay for the ramps – which the city of Madison expects will provide financial benefits to the city with consumers from Huntsville and other points east having a straightforward roadway to the development that currently doesn’t exist.

The plan has the endorsement of Rush Rice, a Montgomery-based financial consultant hired by the city who has been working with city leaders on developing a funding plan for the ramps for almost two years.

Both Madison Mayor Paul Finley and councilwoman Ranae Bartlett – chair of the council’s finance committee – said following Monday’s council meeting they believed the plan under consideration will work. The plan also protects property taxes designated for Madison City Schools, Bartlett said.

The council had a first reading of the funding plan at Monday’s meeting and is expected to vote on the plan at its Nov. 14 meeting. No council members at Monday’s meeting raised any concerns about the funding plan.

Rice made his second presentation Monday to the council on the funding plan in a week, preceded by a work session last week. He said he believed that based on historic tax revenues and growth in Madison, the ramps could be paid for “in eight or nine years.”

“We think that the margin of safety here is extremely high, such that the risk that the city would ever have to would ever have to put something in its budget to support any of this debt would be negligible,” Rice told the council.

Rice emphasized that revenue projections were based on 1.5% growth, a rate he described as “conservative.” For comparison, Finley said the city usually bases its annual budget on a conservative growth rate of 3% annually. Rice said the sales tax to the city from the Publix is estimated to be about $700,000 annually using the 1.5% growth rate.

Another aspect of the funding plan is to replace the existing funding plan for the city to pay for infrastructure at Town Madison and combine it with the bond issue to pay for the ramps that the Publix annexation revenue will work to pay off.

“There’s enough money coming in, within a year within the Town Madison Cooperative District, plus the Publix where you can already see where we’re over the bond payment for, in essence, both pieces taking over the Town Madison piece and paying for the flyovers,” Finley said. “So that’s why we’ll combine the bonds. And then there’s enough from both pots where the schools are getting all their money and the city is getting excess money every year.”

Finley said the funding plan also makes allowances for the city to continue paying off the $46 million Toyota Field. That includes removing the first three hotels at Town Madison from the new funding plan and using the hotel revenue to help pay for the stadium. Ballcorps Inc., the Trash Pandas ownership group, owes the city at least $1 million for 30 years to help pay for the stadium along with other sources of revenue for the city.

Including the ramps, the city will altogether have about $78 million invested in Town Madison. Finley said his anticipation is that the westbound ramps will increase customer traffic from Huntsville and drive more retail investment by private developers in Town Madison. The eastbound ramp to Town Madison on I-565 opened last year.

“The minute you have a full interchange and (investors) know it’s coming, that helps fill that whole thing up with businesses of quality,” Finley said.

The stalemate over the flyover ramp has long hung over the Town Madison development, which includes apartments and single-family homes in addition to the ballpark, hotels, retail businesses and restaurants. Developer Louis Breland originally promised to pay for the flyovers himself.

Finley said that the new arrangement ensures the flyover ramps are built and that the city will save money in the process over the original plan for Breland to pay for it with money generated in Town Madison that will instead go to the city. And just as the city paid for infrastructure within Town Madison, the flyover ramps are now going to be considered part of that infrastructure, Finley said.