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Sweeny considers $600,000 in road repairs
Published March 20, 2009
SWEENY — The city’s streets won’t be paved with gold but with bond money, if City Council agrees to issue $600,000 worth of a certificate of obligation.
Council members discussed a possible bond issue at their meeting Monday after a committee they appointed last month to look into the state of the city’s roads brought the idea before council.
Certificates of obligation are, in effect, bonds issued by local government without requiring direct voter approval. The issue would be for about $600,000, payable over seven years, City Manager Tim Moss said.
The money would pay to put a single seal coat of tar and crushed rocks over most streets in Sweeny, with those streets most in need of repair receiving a double coat, he said.
Mayor Rodney Weems said he’s not sure the certificate is a good idea.
“In all probability, the certificate of obligation is a good start, but part of what would have been done with the certificate of obligation would have to be dug up and then repaired again,” Weems said, speaking of water and sewer replacements within the city.
Though Weems doesn’t believe the city will receive any money from the government stimulus package to do water and sewer repairs, if it does, repairs would cause the streets to be dug up and then patched when work is done, he said. He would rather wait and find another way to fund the street repairs.
“The enterprise fund has to be built up more unless we get lucky and get some of the stimulus money,” Weems said. “We’re looking at a huge bill for the city. Since the reserves have not been built up and the money has not remained in the enterprise escrow account for water and sewer, at some point in time when the water and sewer breaks we’ll either have to float a bond or raise taxes unless we get lucky.”
Weems said during the last 23 years, the $3.6 million that was in the enterprise fund has been gradually moved to the general fund without being built back up, leaving less than $500,000 in the account.
If council approves the certificate of obligation, the city would use the $75,000 normally added to the emergency fund and $30,000 from the street repair budget to make the estimated $107,000 in payments each year, Moss said.
The emergency fund will have $225,000 at the end of this fiscal year, and that money will collect interest until needed.
“I feel like we have enough of a fund set aside so we can take that money that we have been putting into an emergency fund and roll that over to pay for streets,” Moss said. “We’re not going to have to burden the taxpayers with additional money to do this.”
Council instructed the committee to review all city streets and decide which need the most repair for two seal coats and which can get by with just one.
Erin McKeon covers West of the Brazos communities for The Facts. Contact her at (979) 237-0152.
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