LR board approves priorities for streets, drainage projects

Street resurfacing, the installation of new sidewalks, drainage work and more will soon get underway in Little Rock and roll out through 2025 after the city’s Board of Directors on Tuesday approved a list of street and drainage priorities to be funded by an initial cycle of capital-improvement bond proceeds.

A resolution identifying dozens of projects was approved as part of the city board’s consent agenda along with other items, without discussion.

City officials previously held a series of public meetings to solicit ideas and share proposals with regard to the coming capital-improvement work.

Close to $33.4 million is expected to fund the capital improvements to streets and drainage during the first three-year cycle from 2023 through 2025.

Each of the city’s seven wards will get approximately $4.6 million during the first cycle. A pair of citywide priorities related to streets will receive nearly $1.3 million, according to the resolution.

In an August referendum, Little Rock voters approved extending the collection of three mills that fund capital improvements at the current level and issuing bonds to pay for six categories of work.

The categories were streets, drainage, parks (including the Little Rock Zoo), Fire Department apparatus, construction of a new municipal court facility and land acquisition for the Little Rock Port’s industrial park.

The first two categories of streets and drainage together will be responsible for roughly half of the planned $154 million in total spending funded by the bond proceeds.

The mills were last ex

tended following a 2012 referendum in which voters approved reducing the level from 3.3 to 3.0 mills and spending bond proceeds on streets and drainage.

Each mill works out to $1 in tax paid on every $1,000 on the tax-assessed value of a piece of property.

The two planned street-improvement projects under the citywide category are expected to target Kanis Road near an intersection with Cooper Orbit Road as well as the intersection of Chenal Parkway and Gamble Road.

An earlier version of the resolution prepared for the city board’s agenda-setting meeting last week listed improvements to the intersection of Chenal Parkway and Chenal Club Boulevard as a citywide project; that project was shifted to the Ward 5 section of the updated resolution approved on Tuesday.

Shortly before the meeting was adjourned, City Manager Bruce Moore responded to a question from at-large City Director Antwan Phillips by saying that Public Works Director Jon Honeywell and his staff will develop a schedule for the projects.

Moore indicated the first thing residents will start seeing is street resurfacing.