Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
At the workshop before the Thursday meeting of the Tucumcari City Commission, Ralph Lopez, a project manager in the city’s Community Development Department, announced it costs $138,835 per city block to resurface streets.
Assuming eight blocks in a mile, that would mean about $1.1 million per mile.
City Manager Britt Lusk pointed out that figure does not include the cost of replacing or repairing utility infrastructure like water and gas lines that lie under some streets.
In its Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan for years 2021 to 2025, the city estimates the cost of resurfacing and a complete underground overhaul of Second Street in downtown Tucumcari, which will involve replacing a concrete foundation and utility line work, at $3.8 million.
As city finances grow more precarious in the face of declining businesses and population, the cost of resurfacing city streets is growing rapidly.
Without some outside grants and state aid, the city is likely to suffer bumpy pavement and potholes for years to come. The city’s entire $12.7 million in revenues for fiscal 2019 would resurface only 11.5 miles of street, if that’s all the city did with it.
That does not begin to meet the need for nicer streets in the city.
Paving streets hasn’t always been that expensive, though.
Perhaps the chief culprit is a steep rise in the cost of paving material.
Starting some time in 2004, paving material prices started a steep climb that has stabilized once or twice but continues today. Since December 2004, the producer price index indicates paving material prices have increased by 114 percent, that is 14 percentage points more than double, according to FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a data gathering and graphing service provided through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Over the same period, FRED shows a 42 percent gain in the overall producer price index, that’s 74 percentage points below the inflation rate for paving materials.
It seems the city should have embarked on serious road paving initiatives before 2004, but that’s the view with 20-20 hindsight.
Tucumcari city commissioners want to emphasize road improvements in their requests for state funds from the 2020 New Mexico Legislature. Their constituents have told them they’re tired of bumping their way through town. Front-end alignments aren’t getting cheaper either.
City street crews have been diligent about filling potholes, but pothole repairs don’t last long.
The city also tried chip-seal on two streets on the city’s south side within the past several years, commissioners said Thursday, but the chip seal has not held up, either.
The city has no choice but to push for outside help in improving its aging streets, and I hope the city can pick up substantial help from state sources, which are much richer this year than in recent years, in the next legislative session, which begins Jan. 21.
Three state legislators who represent Tucumcari and Quay County have said they are willing to seek aid from several funding sources, not just capital outlay money.
I hope they are successful despite some party differences. Sen. Pete Campos, a Democrat whose district includes a small area of Tucumcari, has said he will work with state Rep. Jack Chatfield and state Sen. Pat Woods, Republicans, to bring some of those new-found state riches to Tucumcari's streets.
I wish them good luck in their quest.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at: