Linden town hall scheduled for May 3 on street repair

Before accepting the City of Linden City Administrator position in June of 2021, it was rapidly evident we had major street problems. Mayor Reynolds and City Councilors were adamant the new administration generate a plan to fix our street infrastructure. City staff and our consulting engineer began the process of an alyzing our street infrastructure and developing a game plan rapidly.

After much work and planning, our consultants and city staff are ready to discuss the approach to repair our street infrastructure. On Tuesday, May 3rd at 6:00 p.m. at Music City Texas, the City Council will be hosting a Town Hall meeting to share the approaches to fixing our streets.

The Town Hall meeting will have the City’s consulting engineer share the street analysis which will provide an overview of current street ratings, costs to fix our streets and philosophical approaches of which types of streets would receive attention more quickly. Streets that are arterial/ collector streets, which are more quantitatively and intensively traversed, e.g. like Kaufman Street or Hamilton Street, will be addressed first due to a larger share of citizens traveling these routes. Local streets, such as e.g. Banger Street, which serve smaller portions of citizens, will be addressed later.

After the City Engineer shares the above, the City’s Financial Planner will provide options to pay for the street improvements. With the comprehensive need to fix all streets in the City being an estimated $8-$10 million, we are no longer able to “patch” out of our current challenges which leads to a bond being necessary to raise the capital needed to fix our streets.

There are two options for bonds, a non-voter approved certificate of obligation bond (CO) or a voter-approved general obligation bond (GO) which would be voted on by registered City voters in November. Either type of bond would be serviced by property taxes.

Currently, economists are forecasting interest rates will increase throughout 2022 and construction prices also will continue to increase. With the terrible conditions of our streets and with time delays, the costs of fixing the depreciated infrastructure will exponentially continue to increase. To receive a bigger bang for the buck, quicker movement to secure street capital funds is imperative.

How did we get to where we are? Previous and the current administrations have attempted a best practice approach of fixing the water and sewer lines before fixing the streets. The City has received a USDA grant/loan to fix our water distribution lines. Eight years later after applying, we are on the cusp of hopefully bidding on this project in 2022. We are at least 2-years away from completing the USDA construction. Unfortunately, a sewer analysis has not been performed, which slows down a best practice approach for fixing streets since most of our sewer collection lines tend to be under the pavement. Our sanitary sewer collection system has long outlived its useful life. The Council will be discussing a plan to analyze our sewer system in the coming months.

In 2014 the City had a comprehensive plan generated which analyzed our streets. The analysis recommended approximately $391,411 per year is needed to maintain streets. Until this last year when the City budgeted approximately $90 thousand for street maintenance, approximately $20 thousand each year had been allocated for street maintenance. Most cities our size each year comprehensively repair 1 to 3 streets. Unfortunately, we have not done this best practice for decades. Streets have a useful life of 20-25 years. After the first 15-years, $1 of preventive maintenance exponentially requires $6 to $10 of maintenance for reference. The vast majority of City streets have far exceeded the less costly 15-year life cycle.

The same analysis was performed in 2021 and our streets had depreciated so badly, our engineers had to generate a hybrid analysis approach to rate our streets. Unfortunately, experiencing a very rare 15-inches of snow in 2021 rapidly expedited depreciation of our streets.

The above has led us to a point where our streets need attention before the optimal best practice scenario of fixing the underground utilities, before overlaying streets. Our citizens are rightfully demanding streets which we can drive on. Therefore, Mayor Reynolds, Councilors and City Staff have listened to the people and we will be providing a plan to fix our streets. On Tuesday, May 3rd the public is invited to come hear from the City’s professional consultants about the conditions, financing options and the plans about how to fix the streets. Please share the date and time of this meeting with anyone interested.