The City of Victoria is well into budget preparations for next fiscal year, and with that comes an important question: Which streets will we fix?
I have attended multiple City Council meetings this year to share information with Council about the City’s capital improvement program, our plan for building and repairing streets and other valuable assets. These presentations help Council to understand the condition of streets in Victoria, and they give my department the opportunity to receive valuable feedback that we can incorporate into our planning.
In addition to projects for next year’s budget, we sometimes discuss ongoing projects for this fiscal year. In particular, I have been keeping Council posted about the Pleasant Green Drive project, which was an emergency addition to this year’s budget after Pleasant Green Drive rapidly deteriorated due to increased traffic caused by construction on U.S. 59.
Council has approved a total of three construction contracts, the most recent one earlier this month, to repair Pleasant Green Drive from Juan Linn to the city limit. Construction will begin in July and finish later this year.
In addition to projects that will be budgeted in the near future, it is helpful to look ahead and think about projects that we will work on years from now. This is especially true of projects that are costly or complicated because we need to be strategic about how we use our funds.
One project that has gotten a lot of attention from Council and the public is the reconstruction of North Street. The total cost to repair North Street between Business 59 and Ben Wilson would be $42 million, more than all of this year’s street projects combined. To help manage the cost, we are breaking the project up into phases, and at Council’s direction, we will start with Phase 3, the section in front of Patti Welder Middle School.
Design work on Phase 3 will begin in fiscal year 2026, followed by construction of Phase 3A (Laurent Street to Avenue C) in 2027 and 3B (Avenue C to Ben Jordan Street) in 2028.
Guy Grant Road is another important project that we are planning to tackle. We intend to start this project in fiscal year 2026; construction will last about three years and is expected to cost over $8 million.
Sometimes residents look at construction projects happening on roads that are in decent shape (like Larkspur Street or Mockingbird Lane) and wonder why we are not using those funds to fix North Street. However, the projects mentioned above are actually preventative maintenance projects, meaning that their purpose is not necessarily to improve a street but rather to maintain its good condition.
When discussing the importance of preventative maintenance, there are a couple of points to consider. The first is that maintenance is much less expensive than reconstruction, so residents should not imagine that the funds used for a maintenance project could fix an area of the same size on North Street or Guy Grant. Second, maintenance projects are a matter of urgency because they need to be completed before the street falls into disrepair. North Street will not get any worse between now and the time we start fixing it, but a somewhat decent street that is in need of maintenance could suffer the same fate if it is neglected too long.
To learn more about the street projects we have planned for the next few years, visit www.victoriatx.gov/engineering. If you’d like to recommend a street for attention, you can submit a project request at www.victoriatx.gov/ciprequest.
David Sheblak is the city engineer for the City of Victoria.