NASHUA — The mayor predicts that the city’s Main Street improvement project will cost about $2 million, but some aldermen want more detailed information.

“I am absolutely interested in understanding the full cost of the work. I don’t think $2 million is the true cost,” Alderman-at-Large Mark Cookson said Wednesday.

The project includes new sidewalks, street lights and mast arms traffic posts as well as the correction of drainage problems and more.

Cookson said Mayor Donnalee Lozeau’s tally includes costs for materials only, and does not take into consideration labor and equipment.

“I do not have a budget for all of Main Street,” Lozeau said Wednesday. “I don’t have a full budget yet because we haven’t finished the engineering and designing.”

Lozeau maintains that it will cost less to have Department of Public Works employees perform the work.

Last week, Alderman-at-Large, James Donchess filed proposed legislation that would require the mayor and the Board of Public Works to keep track of and account for all costs of the Main Street project, including labor and equipment, and report the costs to the public and aldermen within 60 days.

The legislation, if adopted by the Board of Aldermen, would also require the establishment of a total budget for the Main Street project, which would need to be presented to aldermen within two months.

“Taxpayers have a right to know what is being spent,” Donchess said this week.

He sponsored the legislation. It is being co-sponsored by Cookson, Alderman-at-Large Barbara Pressly and Alderman-at-Large David Deane.

Last Friday, aldermen were provided with a report highlighting numerous expenditures to date for the Main Street improvements, according to Lozeau. It included purchases totaling nearly $562,000, and city labor and materials totaling $319,000 for refurbishments on the Main Street Bridge, Saffron Bistro block and Arlington Street.

Donchess said he still would like to see a line-by-line budget for the entire project.

“You can’t even evaluate how much it would cost,” Donchess said of using city workers, asking whether it might be more efficient to use a normal bidding process.

According to the proposed resolution, the aldermanic Budget Committee was told last month that the Department of Public Works will not keep track of and account for the costs of labor and equipment expended on the Main Street project.

Wednesday, Lozeau explained that it is very time-consuming to calculate and track internal labor costs for work done by city employees.

“I am not going to track it every hour,” she said.

However, the mayor said she will provide whatever budget information is available to aldermen as the Main Street work progresses, and post it online for the public to view.

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Kimberly Houghton may be reached at khoughton@newstote.com.