City explains next steps in street improvement plan

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers and other city officials gathered Wednesday to talk about the successful outcome of two Election Day ballot measures.

The city scheduled a meeting at 11 a.m. at the City Administration Building, 30 South Nevada Avenue.

On Tuesday, voters passed Measures 2C and 2D.

2C will raise the city’s sales tax by .62 percent over the next five years and generate $250 million for street improvements.

2D allows the city to keep $2.1 million in excess tax revenue from 2014, and use the money to repair trails in city parks.

The city recently released a list of streets to be repaved next year in the first year of the 2C tax increase. Garden of the Gods and North Cheyenne Caon Park are included.

At Wednesday’s meeting, city officials said they will send requests for bids to contractors within the next week.

“We want the best value, low cost and high quality work,” said Travis Easton, the city’s public works director. “We’ll hire three contractors. One will be a backup that we’ll use if needed.”

Officials said they will start concrete work in January and asphalt paving in the spring, likely by April.

“We think revenue from the tax increase will come in at a rate of $4 million a month,” Suthers said “We don’t want to overload the contractors and we want to limit the impact on drivers.”

Suthers said he will appoint five people to an advisory committee, meeting every three months to monitor work and update the priority list if necessary.

“It (committee) will probably have someone with expertise in road repair, someone with financial expertise and two City Council members,” he said.

Officials renewed their promise to be transparent and accountable regarding how the money is spent. Easton said the Streets Division will release public reports regularly and create a website that citizens can visit for updated information.

Streets Division Manager Corey Farkas said the city is breaking ground in more ways than one with the plan.

“As far as we’ve been able to find, there are no other cities that have actually done this much work in this short amount of time, at this scale,” Farkas said. “So there’s no one we can go to for advice.”

Some business owners remain skeptical about the plan and the tax increase, but the owner of a recreational vehicle dealership said she’s keeping an open mind.

“I have gotten a lot of comments from people about the roads,” said Karen Moore of Hickman Trailer & RV. “We’ve had some potholes on our intersection that have made it extremely noisy. I’m curious (about) how it’s going to impact business from a sales tax perspective on these higher-end coaches that I sell, but the city definitely needs to bring up our infrastructure.”

Suthers said the plan will create as many as 500 jobs.

Regarding Measure 2D, officials said they hope to finish eight trail repair projects by November 2016.

Shooks Run, Skyline and Sand Creek trails are highest on the priority list, officials said.