The Williams City Council last week said they will spend $1 million from the general fund this year for road repairs.
City officials said according to their Pavement Management Plan, the city would need to spend about $4 million a year to bring roads up to par over 10 years, and spend at least $850,000 to $1 million on general maintenance to prevent
Based on estimated costs and priorities set in the Pavement Management Plan, the city agreed to spend about $650,000 to maintain some of the city’s better roads by filling and microsurfacing to keep them from deteriorating to the point that they have to be reconstructed.
“It’s almost 10 times more expensive to rebuild a road than to microsurface and maintain it, to prolong its life,” Kennedy said.
Microsurfacing to be done includes E St., from Vann to 7th, and from E to Husted, along with portions of Ruggeri, 7th St., Virginia St., San Antonio Loop, Vasto, Cuppelo, and East Franklin.
The city also plans to completely reconstruct D Street, between 10th and 11th, and restripe E St., 7th St., and 9th St., at Zumwalt.
However, the opportunity for general funds to be used this year for road improvements is not something city officials said would be a sustainable practice.
“This is a substantial investment that the city is making…,” said Finance Director Rex Greenbaun. “I think over the last few years, the city has been pretty proactive and conservative, and has taken some money-saving measures during the pandemic to be able to set aside some money and funds for this. We do need the half-cent sales tax. It’s definitely much needed to fix our streets. This ($1 million) is a drop in the bucket, but it is a start. If we want to continue this, we will need other continuing sources of revenue.”
Kennedy said he hoped the improvements would be enough to show residents what the city could do if they had an additional $1 million every year to invest in roads.
“One of the goals from this is to get $1 million worth of work, and, as we’ve said on several occasions now, that if we had an additional half-cent sales tax, the city council could put that into roads every year…” Kennedy said. “We can basically do this every year. I think that is one of the points we strongly wanted to make with the citizens and the city council.”
All the projects will go out to bid, officials said, and, if there are any funds remaining, the council hopes to make improvements to a few other residential streets on the west side of town.
“Generations of people have been waiting for something like this – something big to happen,” said Councilman Sajit Singh.■