Schertz officials updated on five-year street repair plan
The Schertz City Council received separate briefings on a five-year street repair plan at its March 10 meeting.
City Engineer John Nowak told the council that most of the listed projects will concentrate on perseveration of existing streets, especially work using a technique called “chip seal,” to “make that investment into a street before it really starts to deteriorate.”
In 2020, that list includes roadways in the Dove Meadows, Silvertree, Ashley Place, and Parkland Village neighborhoods. Each of those efforts are estimated to cost between $150,000 and $550,000 apiece, Nowak said.
The biggest project planned for this year is reconstruction of Lindbergh Avenue between Main Street and Exchange Avenue, work which includes installing new storm drains and is expected to cost an estimated $760,000.
In building his five-year plan, Nowak told the council he was making an assumption that the street repair budget will remain at about $2 million a year. “That’s how we structured the plan,” he explained. “If we have more money, the cut (off) line moves down and we can do more work that given year. If we have less funding, then we’ll have a shorter list of projects we can get done in a given year.”
In holding to that $2 million annual figure, Nowak added, it was necessary to balance out the number and costs of various projects over the five-year period.
He pointed to the fact that there were 17 projects and studies scheduled for 2020, but only two anticipated for 2021. “So there are some years we do a little bit of extra work so we have extra funding to carry over to the following year so that we would have enough money to do a needed project,” Nowak said.
A separate list of projects will be funded from capital recovery money collected from traffic impact fees. These tend to be larger, more complex work including reconstruction plans for Old Wiederstein and Eckhardt roads which are estimated to total more than $7 million. These projects could be eligible for other sources of funding, including money from the Metropolitan Planning Organization and federal grants, he explained.
Councilman David Scagliola acknowledged the delay of work on some Schertz streets. “And I know it’s not your fault,” he told Nowak. “I know for a fact that you’ve let contract after contract and nobody’s bid on the contracts so you really can’t get something done.”
But Scagliola questioned the use of “carry over” funding in Nowak’s plan, saying he would prefer to “bite off more than you can chew, plan to accomplish these projects knowing that at least some of them probably won’t take place. That keeps us at least moving down the road.”
The councilman said planning those projects now might actually save costs in the long run. “When it comes to construction, time is money. The more that they are delayed, they’re not going to get any cheaper. I’d rather have them planned out in anticipation that the money will be available when the project is ready to be let,” he told Nowak.
Councilwoman Rosemary Scott was not so sure. “I’m with you philosophically about putting it on the drawing board, but I’m a little apprehensive about putting it in a public forum because then it will look like that maybe we’re dropping the ball when that looks like it is more on the horizon than the immediate.”
No council action was taken on the five-year plan.
The council did vote unanimously to both annex a half-acre of land at 13805 Interstate 10 East and rezone that parcel to public use district status. No one spoke at the required public hearings prior to those votes.
The site will be used to construct a lift station facility as part of the Woman Hollering Creek wastewater line project.
