PHOTO: Dairy Road is scheduled for reconstruction between Salem and Whispering Creek during the upcoming fiscal year.
Fiscal year 2023 will be another record-breaking year for street projects in Victoria as the City works to repair our most troubled streets.
Look through the capital improvement plan summary in the budget highlights flyer and you’ll see that there are many different kinds of street projects, with terms like “pre-engineering design,” “reconstruction” and “utility/street reconstruction” being used to describe each one. You might also notice some familiar names from last year’s budget. What’s up with that?
When talking about dates and timelines for street repair projects, it’s important to remember that most street projects, especially the more time-consuming reconstruction projects, are split into phases across multiple years.
Most projects spend their first year of existence in the design phase, with work taking place completely behind the scenes. Take, for example, Guy Grant Street and North Street. We receive many complaints about each of these streets per year, but finding a fiscally responsible way to fix them is difficult because of the scope of work and the number of variables. (Is Guy Grant’s open-ditch design still working for us? What are our options for utilities? How about sidewalks?)
During the upcoming fiscal year, the City will seek pre-engineering design services for both of these streets. The design firm will provide the City with potential options for street reconstruction, drainage and so forth, along with cost estimates for each. This exploratory phase will also include suggestions for breaking the projects up into phases so that they don’t eat up the City’s budget all at once.
Apart from cost considerations, project scope is another reason that the physical work on a project might be divided into multiple phases. For example, one phase of the Tanglewood project (which was in the design phase last year) includes both utility replacement and street reconstruction to some areas of the neighborhood. The work to be completed this year will focus solely on utilities.
While most of the capital improvement budget is reserved for street and utility projects, the plan also includes other amenities that will enhance livability in our community. Here are some of the other projects residents can look forward to:
- The new public safety building (this project is in the design phase)
- Phase II of the citywide LED lighting project
- The expansion of DeLeon Plaza
The City’s budget webpage includes a handy flyer listing all of the capital improvement projects that are budgeted for fiscal year 2023, along with other useful information about the budget. To view the budget flyer as well as the full FY2023 budget, visit www.victoriatx.gov/budget.
Is the street you wanted not on the list? Check out the City’s four-year capital improvement plan at www.victoriatx.gov/engineering to see if it’s scheduled for a future budget year. If it isn’t, send us a project request at www.victoriatx.gov/ciprequests.
Sam Hankins is the communications specialist for the City of Victoria.