CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — One topic that seems to remain consistent among residents in Corpus Christi is the condition of the roads. As a way to fix the streets that are in the worst condition, city leaders created the rapid pavement program several years ago.
Through that initiative, they specifically implemented the Residential Street Rebuild Program, which focuses on aging infrastructure.
“We have a lot of streets that have issues with potholes. We get a lot of calls from the residents through 311," Director of Public Works Ernesto De La Garza said.
De La Garza said he and his team will repair at least 30 miles of streets across the city through the program.
“When council approved the pavement-only approach where we only are working on the street. Instead of six per year, now we’re tracking about 30," De La Garza said.
While looking at the City’s 2023-24 fiscal year Finance Report, it showed that the city allocated $20.7 million for the residential street budget. In addition to that $20 million budget on the report, it also showed that the city has only utilized about 3% of the budget so far this fiscal year. This means they have only spent about $608,568 between October 2023 to March 2024.
“The fiscal year starts in October, so from that time frame to about March time frame, we had to take it to council, get our designs done," De La Garza said. "That’s either procurement or testing or anything like that.”
The same thing happened during 2022-23 fiscal year, where the budget was $33 million but only 29% of it was used. Anything paid to fix residential streets is funded from a Two-plus-Two Property Tax, the Industrial District and the General Fund.
When residents were asked how they felt to know that the city has not utilized nearly half the budget they’ve accounted for to fix streets, they didn't seem surprised.
“It's not very good management, I would think," Maxey said. "I just personally feel that they’re not putting priority on it. Most of us will be long gone before they ever repair many of the streets here in town.
De La Garza said after getting everything in order on the back end, the city is now putting their boots on the ground to get to work. He added that the money should be used in its entirety by the end of the fiscal year, but whatever is not used during this current fiscal year will be put into a fund balance and goes towards next year’s budget.
He also ensured that his team is on track to utilize the remainder of this year’s budget by the end of August.
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