City to focus on temporary road repairs
The city of Yuma has nearly $20.2 million budgeted for fiscal year 201718 in its two funds used to fix roads — the City Road Tax Fund and the Highway User Revenue Fund.
Still, that doesn’t come close to the roughly $100 million the city estimates it would take to fix all of the roads in their backlog inventory. Public works director Joel Olea previously told the Yuma City Council that 40 percent of the city’s roads are in poor or very poor condition — 148 miles out of a total 367.
But, as the saying goes, “you have to start somewhere,” and City Administrator Greg Wilkinson said that will begin with road designs and repairs in the upcoming fiscal year followed by replacements in the subsequent year.
Aside from the big replacement and widening project at 4th Avenue and 16th Street, patchwork repairs have been the primary focus of this current fiscal year as well.
Just last week, the city commenced its spring slurry seal program — aimed at main arterial and collector streets in need of work, meaning roads that go through central business districts and the roads that distribute traffic from neighborhoods to those main thoroughfares.
With a lot of those roads — and neighborhood streets, too — the city has
been using the slurry seal as a Band-Aid to make them last a few years longer.
“We don’t have the money to replace the asphalt when it needs to be replaced,” Wilkinson said. “So, what we have been doing is kind of using slurry seal to glue the roads in place.”
Slurry seal usually lasts between 3-5 years on roads before it needs to be redone or the road needs to be replaced entirely.
The city is currently working on roadway replacement designs for the next few years and has about a dozen projects in preparation for the upcoming fiscal year, including some replacement projects, which Wilkinson said will be presented to the council Tuesday night.
Two replacement projects the city plans to do in the 2017-18 budget year are at 16th Street between Avenues B and C and on 1st Avenue between 12th and 16th streets.
But again, the will be on slurry sealing and other patchwork repairs.
City Road Tax Fund
Even with a $20 millionplus budget, the city has a significant fund balance in both the City Road Tax Fund and the Highway User Revenue Fund, something recently questioned by city council member Jacob Miller.
The upcoming budget for the City Road Tax Fund specifically, which is funded by a 0.5 percent portion of the city’s 1.7 percent sales tax, is about $12.5 million. But there will still be about $6.3 million left over at the end of the fiscal year.
This year — heading into next fiscal year — that fund balance is around $12 million, more than the fund’s estimated revenues for the entire 2017-18 fiscal year (around $11.3 million).
When Yuma roads are in need of such dire repair, why is that?
The city administrator said there are several reasons for that fund balance. One is that the city has been selling land that was purchased with road tax money, he said, which has “helped feed the fund.”
Wilkinson also noted that there were some project delays that have carried money over to recent fiscal years.
“We had a couple of projects this (fiscal) year (where) the engineering company didn’t get us the design,” he said.
One ended up having to be delayed until this summer because it was in front of a school.
“We can’t rip up asphalt right in front of the school while school’s in session.”
“We’ve come up with a much more aggressive schedule because we’ve had some issues like that,” Wilkinson added. “That’s why the fund is built up a little bit.”
He noted that the excess funds will continue to deplete with the amount of projects scheduled for the next few years.
Highway User Revenue Fund
HURF money comes from a state gasoline tax that is shared with cities. Arizona has been sweeping those funds from the cities and counties it shares them with, and like most others, Yuma isn’t happy about it.
The city has a bit more than $7.6 million in the HURF budget for the 201718 year, but finance director Pat Wicks said there should be another $1 million or so in the coffers.
Statewide, roughly $100 million has been kept by the state annually that is supposed to be given to localities.
“The issue was really created by the state since they’ve been sweeping HURF funds over the last 10 years, and I think it’s up to them to fix it,” Wilkinson said.
He said the state House budget has a full restoration of HURF planned.
“We’re not counting on it,” he said, “but I’m optimistic that they will (restore the funds).”