SPRINGDALE — City officials are looking at a backup plan for street construction if the money available won’t cover costs of the planning projects.

Estimates for the projects total about $7.5 million more than is available, said Alan Pugh, city engineering director. The shortfall should grow smaller, said Mayor Doug Sprouse, if the construction contracts come in better than anticipated. Many of the projects going out for bid recently come in under the estimates, Sprouse said.

“It would take a lot of good bids to make that up,” said Mike Overton, alderman.

If the money falls short for finishing the projects as proposed, Sprouse said, the city could reduce the final project, an extension of 56th Street from Har-Ber Avenue to Elm Springs Road, from four lanes to two.

The city needs to finish the street to fulfill the wording of a bond election, according to Wyman Morgan, city director of administration and financial services.

The money for the streets comes from a bond sale of $42.7 million. The bonds in the sale, approved by voters in August 2012, would be repaid from an existing 1 percent city sales tax.

The projects include building the Don Tyson interchange on Interstate 540, widening Don Tyson Parkway between 40th Street and Carley Road, extending the parkway from Hylton Road to Habberton Road and improvements on 58th Street from its projected intersection with the parkway to Elm Spring Road.

The priority on 58th Street set by the council, Pugh said, started on the south at the parkway and ran to the north. The money, if expenses stay as high as estimates, would run out after the section to Har-Ber Avenue is finished, Pugh said.

The council committee agreed the design work on the Har-Ber to Elm Springs section should continue. The city would eventually widen the extension to four traffic lanes, even if only two are constructed now.

Complete plans would be needed to purchase all the right of way and install utilities in locations that would not have to be moved, said Brian Moore, engineer with Engineering Services Inc., the firm designing the project.

The council has known that money from its Capital Improvement Program might be needed to complete the project, said Eric Ford, alderman.

The city also might have to spend less on some of the projects if more federal money becomes available. The Council has committed spending up to $1 million on a state Highway and Transportation Department project to widen the Elm Springs Road bridge over I-540. A grant could reduce that cost by $700,000, Sprouse said.

The committee also sent resolutions to the full council to spend $150,000 at the city airport on relocating fuel tanks that would have to be removed by a new access road to the terminal. The new road, estimated at a cost of $750,000, is being paid through grants from the Federal Aviation Agency and the state Board of Aeronautics, said Greg Willoughby, chairman of the Airport Commission.