When Anna Maldonado and her family moved into the northwest side’s Orangewood Estates development in the early 1980s, the roads were almost as new as their recently constructed home.
Things have changed since then.
Now, according to county data previously provided to the Road Runner, many of the roads that crisscross the neighborhood near West Magee and North Oldfather roads are deemed to be in “poor” or “failed” condition. Photos Maldonado provided show sections of street that could only nominally be described as paved.
There is, of course, absolutely nothing unique about the situation. Countywide, more than 65 percent of local streets — as opposed to collector or arterial streets — are in either failed or poor condition. That figure is much lower — about 29 percent — for much more heavily used arterials.
Maldonado, like many county residents, grumbled for years about the state of her roads. Last October, however, she heard about a collision in which someone hit one of the neighborhood’s numerous potholes and drove into a fire hydrant, after which she says county crews finally came to repair the pothole. She called county officials asking for more patchwork, an approach her son felt was a fool’s errand.
“That’s not how you’re going to get it done,” he suggested. “You need to do a petition.”
Hoping to get it finished before the Oct. 18 board of supervisors meeting, Anna and a neighbor quickly went door to door asking people to sign in support of getting their roads “remilled and resurfaced.” Within a few days, 240 people had signed, which likely represents more than half of the neighborhood’s households.
Supervisor Ally Miller, whose district includes Orangewood, passed the petition along to county administration with the following request: “Due to a lack of maintenance and repair by the county over the past 20 years, this road is now in dire need of being re-milled and resurfaced before someone is seriously injured. I am requesting immediate action.”
Anna and her husband, Ray Maldonado, came the supervisors meeting to plead their case, and now — a few months later — they have their answer: No.
County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry asked the transportation department to provide a cost estimate for the requested work, which worked out to about $1.1 million for the neighborhood’s 3.74 miles of road.
“Funds for such are unavailable,” he wrote in a memo earlier this month.
He also asked Priscilla Cornelio, the county’s transportation director, to provide a summary of how this fiscal year’s $4.5 million budget for pavement preservation, which is where money for projects like Orangewood would come from, was being spent. All of them were major arterials or collector roads.
Money for pavement preservation is a fairly small part of the county’s transportation budget, accounting for 8 percent of the fiscal year 2015 budget. Combined, more than half that year’s transportation budget went to servicing debt for past roadway projects and roadway maintenance, which includes crack sealing and pothole repair.
In her memo to Huckelberry, Cornelio noted that there are about 1,000 miles of county roads that “require attention,” work estimated to cost $250 million.
Maldonado appreciates her neighborhood is not alone in having bad streets. That being said, she doesn’t think hers “will last another five years.”
“They have to find the money,” she added.
To do that, Huckelberry has another simple answer.
“There has to be a recognition on everybody’s part that it’s going to take taxes,” he said.
Huckelberry and other county officials have long argued that Pima County does not get its fair share of the Highway User Revenue Fund, or HURF, which is made up largely of state gas-tax revenues; that the state and federal gas taxes, which have not been increased since the early 1990s, are in need of revision; and that an additional half-cent countywide sales tax dedicated to road repair would go a long way toward giving roads like Orangewood’s the attention they need.
Miller has been a vocal critic of blaming the state for the county’s road woes. However, she did not return requests for comment on Orangewood Estates specifically and transportation funding generally.
For her part, Maldonado splits the blame for her neighborhood’s situation evenly between Miller, whom she accuses of being big on talk and light on action, and Huckelberry, whom she doesn’t trust to spend road dollars “properly.”
Huckelberry’s proposals have gotten some recent backing from a state task force created by the Legislature to look into ways to improve transportation funding. The dryly named Surface Transportation Funding Task Force released its equally dry final report Dec. 31, and raising the gas tax was one its most repeated recommendations. It also suggests the Legislature should allow counties and regional transportation authorities to pursue “local options” — like the additional half-cent sales tax Huckelberry talks about — “as appropriate.”
What the Legislature chooses do with its creation’s recommendations is, of course, another matter altogether. For Maldonado, the key word in all the proposals is tax.
“Every time you turn around, they’re asking for more money,” she said. “How much more can you drain these people?”
DOWN THE ROAD
Visitors to Saguaro National Park West will have some roadwork to contend with this week. Starting Tuesday, Jan. 17, crews will intermittently reduce traffic to one lane on North Sandario Road at its intersection with North Kinney Road between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to install traffic counting sensors. The work will continue through Jan. 24.
Overnight utility work on West Ajo Way at its intersection with South 16th Avenue will reduce the highway to one lane from 9 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, to 5 a.m. Wednesday.
