After tough legislative cycle, Pima County's road repair options grim

Things aren’t looking too hot for pavement preservation work in unincorporated Pima County in the coming fiscal year.

The current year’s budget for such work is about $4.5 million, which will end up covering work on 15 miles of major collector and arterial streets, but no local streets, which have far lighter traffic but are much more likely to be in failed or poor condition.

Depending on how things shake out at the Legislature, that figure “could be as low as $1 million” for fiscal year 2018, according to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.

That happens to be the approximate cost to mill and replace just 3.74 miles of residential streets in the Northwest development Orangewood Estates, whose residents mounted a passionate but ultimately unsuccessful petition drive late last year to have their potholed roads fixed.

The county maintains around 2,300 miles of roads, over 60 percent of which are poor or failed condition.

Huckelberry and other county officials were hoping for the Legislature to take action on a number of items that could have significantly increased the pot of money available for pavement repair and preservation, but have so far struck out. County lobbyist Michael Racy said he’s “cautiously hopeful” there’s still a chance a measure to reverse sweeps of Highway User Revenue Fund included in the governor’s budget, but the outcome is far from certain. Success there would bring the total for the coming year to $3 million.

The other major transportation funding measures pursued by the county, including two approaches to raising gas taxes and an effort to get owners of alternative fuel vehicles to chip in more to road repair coffers, all foundered.

“Any direct funding increase by legislative action is remote for this legislative year,” Huckelberry wrote in a March 23 memo.

Also cutting into possible funding for repair and preservation in the near term is what Huckelberry said were sizable county contributions to the public safety employee retirement system.

In the March 23 memo, he wrote he was reviewing a number of proposals for consideration by the board of the supervisors to get annual repair funds up to $8 million, but last week he told the Road Runner that, “We may go a whole other year without any real … road repair relief.”

So, what options exist in the near term for the woeful state of many county roads, which Huckelberry recently described as “our number one public policy issue?”

Supervisor Ally Miller, a longtime critic of county transportation policy, said she’s still going to “advocate strongly” for general fund support for road repair during the current budget process, as well as for prioritizing repair with the millions of HURF dollars the county still receives.

But with an estimated $250 million required to bring all roads in unincorporated Pima County back into decent shape and significant savings on debt service for the 1997 HURF bonds still several years off, scouring the budget every year for spare millions likely isn’t up to the task.

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To generate that sort of money, Huckelberry has advocated for asking county voters for a 10-year, half-cent county sales tax that would be administered by the Regional Transportation Authority and dedicated to road repair. Such a tax would generate an estimated $800 million over its life, which would be split among the county, the City of Tucson, Marana and other jurisdictions.

That would require an OK from the Legislature, which isn’t coming this year. Another approach that doesn’t require any legislative approval is for the Board of Supervisors to approve its own half-cent sales tax, which could also be administered by the RTA and shared among the local jurisdictions.

The only catch is that that approach requires a unanimous vote from the supervisors, which Huckelberry isn’t holding his breath for.

However, Miller, who would likely be the key vote in such a measure, told the Road Runner that she could be “open” to either approach to a regional road repair sales tax, but only if a number of conditions are met.

“And that’s a big ‘if,’ ” she said.

First off, next year Miller hopes to get the Legislature to put strict limits on the use of HURF funds, which she argues have been misused by the county, adding that it’s difficult to tell if new taxes are even necessary without assurances that those dollars are spent on transportation and penalties if they are not. Huckelberry has long countered that Pima County does spend its HURF funds appropriately.

She would also like the individual supervisors to oversee how the money raised by any such tax is spent in their districts, because she and her four colleagues are “the ones who are accountable to the taxpayers,” she said.

Miller previously told the Road Runner that if the RTA is to administer any regional road repair sales tax, a forthcoming state audit of the organization will need to show the agency has performed responsibly since it was formed in 2006.

“The only reason I would be open to (a sales tax) is because after 20 years of neglect, we are in a terrible mess,” Miller said.

And then there is the question of timing. Tucson voters will be asked this May to approve a five-year half-cent sales tax, 40 percent of the revenues from which would go toward both major and local city road repair, with the remainder going toward public safety.

If city residents approve it, as Huckelberry hopes, the county administrator said any regional or county sales tax would likely have to wait until the city’s ends to avoid stacking another sales tax on top of those residents. Miller agreed any overlap between the two measures would be a “tough sell,” echoing comments from Marana Town Manager Gilbert Davidson

But Racy and Oro Valley Mayor Satish Hiremath, who also serves as the RTA’s vice chair, don’t think it’s impossible to get enough voter support for both measures.

Whatever approach is ultimately pursued, Huckelberry is likely not alone in thinking that “local road repair in the county’s unincorporated area cannot wait five years.”