PUEBLO – Mayor Nick Gradisar expects City Council to revisit the structure of the street repair fees. Small business owner Lee Gladney toldNews 5 on Thursday that he got sticker shock from the first round of bills on his shopping centers.
“I’ve heard the City council express the idea of, let’s put this in place and if it doesn’t work, let’s take a look at it, we can fix it,” Gradisar said.
He knows the fees don’t match the promises made to voters in 2017. However, the question on the ballot didn’t include promises.
“Really, the citizens sort of gave us a blank check,” he said. “There wasn’t anything on the ballot about we’re going to charge you a dollar a month or $10 a month or $1,000 a month. They just said yeah, set up the street repair utility enterprise and let’s get going on these streets.”
Fixing the fee issue could end up costing everybody a little more. The early numbers show roughly $118,000 was collected in February, the first month of the fees. Gradisar expects the enterprise will generate around $2 million this year in revenue.
“So, it’s about a 2/3rd measure of what the experts thought would be needed to make a dent in some of these street repairs.”
The four resurfacing projects listed for 2019 in the Capital Improvement Plan are estimated cost $3.4 million.
“The important thing is we want to collect the money and get the streets repaired,” Gradisar said. “We’ve already waited too long.”
