Streets a teeth-rattling adventure

A stretch of 105th Street near Old Maple Road is a poster child for Mayor Jim Suttle's push to raise Omaha's wheel tax — and with good reason.

It looks more like a lunar landscape than a street. Craters are more than 3 inches deep, and some are the size of manhole covers. Even when crawling along at 2 mph, cars rock violently.

The Suttle administration is showing pictures of the ragged roadway as part of its pitch for raising the annual wheel tax by $23 per vehicle, from $35 to $58, for passenger vehicles.

But while most Omahans might agree that 105th Street and similar stretches of road need major repairs, it turns out that only a small slice of wheel tax money is earmarked for rebuilding or resurfacing streets.

Instead, most of the wheel tax money collected in 2011 would be aimed at shorter-term street needs, such as plowing snow, sweeping debris and filling potholes.

It's a spending pattern that's been true for years. The low priority given to resurfacing, combined with rising costs for asphalt, has contributed to a increasing backlog of unmet street needs.

From 2001 to 2005, for example, the city resurfaced 929 blocks of residential streets. From 2006 through 2010, the city expects to redo a total of 358 blocks.

Even with a wheel tax hike, Omaha might make only a modest dent in its street repair list.

Bob Stubbe, Omaha public works director, said as much as $10.5 million worth of resurfacing is needed on residential streets this year, but there's only $1.5 million in the budget.

That would leave $9 million worth of work left over to do in 2011, not counting additional streets that will need work. Yet a higher wheel tax would bring next year's residential resurfacing budget to only $3 million.

“We absolutely have to increase the wheel tax,” said City Councilman Ben Gray. “Right now, we're going to go until November until we get all the potholes filled because we simply don't have the money and don't have the resources.”

But Councilwoman Jean Stothert said she is concerned about raising the wheel tax. She said she knows streets are in bad shape, but some repairs might have wait.

“Do we need to add on another tax right now?” Stothert asked. “We need to fix the basics, fix the potholes and develop a resurfacing program when we have more funds.”

City Finance Director Pam Spaccarotella said the city probably could not do any residential resurfacing in 2011 unless it obtained additional wheel tax revenue.

“We would have to zero it out,” she said of the residential work.

The Suttle administration is seeking the higher wheel tax because the cost of resurfacing has gone up, the city's allocation of the state gas tax has gone down and hard winters have hammered the city's budget for snow plowing and pothole patching.

Omaha pays for street maintenance and repairs, as well as related things such as streetlights, mainly through the wheel tax and gas tax. Almost none of those street costs is funded by property and sales taxes. Nor can the money collected for street work be used for other city operations.

In recent years, as costs rose and revenues slumped, Omaha didn't cut spending on streets. Instead, it spent more than it was bringing in, using reserves that had built up in the street maintenance and street and highway allocation funds. But after draining more than $10 million from those funds since 2008, the city can't go back to that well in 2011.

Spaccarotella said the higher wheel tax would bring in $8.6 million for street spending, balancing the budget and allowing more spending on snow removal, pothole repairs and residential resurfacing.

“Do you want to drive down the street and not have to worry about swerving around a pothole?” she asked. “Sometimes you have to pay a little more.”

For passenger vehicles, the $23 increase works out to a 66 percent hike. The cost for commercial vehicles, which have varying rates based on weights and other factors, also would rise by $23.

Suttle's proposed budget would set aside $7.6 million for snow removal next year, up sharply from $4.8 million this year. Spending on pavement maintenance, which includes filling potholes, sealing cracks and replacing small damaged sections of concrete, would rise from $9.8 million to $11.2 million.

The extra money should keep those areas under budget even if next winter is bad, officials said. If the city doesn't spend it all on snow removal, the money could be saved for future years or shifted to other street needs, such as resurfacing residential areas.

As proposed, however, the 2011 budget for fixing residential streets would be about $3 million. While that's twice as much as this year's spending, it accounts for just 10 percent of the $28.9 million collected in the street maintenance fund. The fund gets its money from the wheel tax, as well as from street cut fees paid by utilities and contractors.

The city plans to use about $950,000 in wheel tax money for major street resurfacing. The money will be combined with federal funding to pay for about $4 million in work.

Suttle also wants to earmark about $1 million of the increased wheel tax for park road repairs.

No matter what happens with the wheel tax, 105th Street near Old Maple Road will be resurfaced this summer. Preliminary work has begun, Stubbe said, and the work should be finished in August.

It's long overdue, said Councilman Thomas Mulligan, whose northwest Omaha district includes the damaged street.

Mulligan called it an “embarrassment” for the city. He said an increase in the wheel tax is essential if Omaha wants to catch up on road repairs. The longer the city waits to fix its streets, he said, the more expensive it will become.

Councilman Pete Festersen said he realizes the city needs street repairs. But he is concerned about the effect the wheel tax hike and other proposed tax increases would have on residents out of work or struggling financially.

Beth Jensen, 20, a grill cook, said she's willing to pay a higher wheel tax — but only if the city made significant road improvements.

Jensen ranks a two-block stretch of 105th Street near her home as one of the worst in the city. It's just terrible,” she said. “You just bounce around.”

World-Herald staff writers Maggie O'Brien and Joe Dejka contributed to this report.

Contact the writer:

444-1114, paul.goodsell@owh.com

« Metro/Region

Share