By the end of the year another 16 miles of roads will be resurfaced thanks to efforts from the city to make Plant City an easily accessible location for all who live, work and play in town.
While last year a large portion of the roads selected for renovation were some of the major thoroughfares throughout town, this year the city has put a focus on neighborhoods in disrepair. Country Club Court, Clubhouse Drive, East Mahoney Street, West Greenfield Avenue and many more will help ensure all areas of the city are being brought up to par.
“Soon we will have the oldest roads in Plant City just be around seven or eight years old,” City Manager Bill McDaniel said. “That’s amazing to think about. We take our promise to our residents seriously and we have made this a top priority. Pretty soon you’ll have a hard time finding a bad road in Plant City. What a great problem to have that will be.”
The 16.17 miles of roadwork will cost the city an estimated $4,851,000. The funds come from the one-mill tax and the $2 million from Hillsborough County, according to the city of Plant City. Six separate streets — totaling 1.64 miles — are set to be paved this fiscal year and are funded via the Community Development Block Grant.
The city does a condition assessment of all the roads in its limits, McDaniel said. Using the assessment they know which roads are fair, good, poor and failed. Those with the lower two ratings are prioritized for upcoming repair. They are then matched with a utilities assessment to make sure there will not be any major utility work in the area in the next few years.
Utility work requires the road to be stripped as crews dig down to the underlying lines and pipes. In order to prevent having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars repaving the road twice those with upcoming construction are set aside.
McDaniel said the city also takes a balanced approach to how it selects needed repairs. When looking at a map of Plant City it can essentially be divided into four sections via the major railroad tracks. If you look at the divided quadrants McDaniel said this upcoming round of repairs ensures the last two years have tackled infrastructure in all sections of town.
The city is already working on a second list for later this year, which McDaniel estimates will be approximately the same size as this 16-mile endeavor. Thanks to the passing of All for Transportation, cities will be receiving funds for a variety of things including road repair. Doubling the amount of roads paved this year will bring the city to near 50 percent completion of all roads in Plant City thanks to the major push for resurfacing over the past two years, according to McDaniel. Now that the city has approved the budget, the next step is to go through a procurement process and bids. McDaniel said he estimates construction will begin around the first of March.
Mayor Rick Lott discussed the project in Monday night’s commission meeting saying he was excited for the list McDaniel brought to the table and is looking forward to having a city full of recently-repaired streets. The city commissioners unanimously approved the project Monday night.
“This is keeping with the promise we made to the community that the one-mill ad valorem tax, 100 percent of those proceeds would go into infrastructure — water, sewer and roads,” Lott said. “What we’re approving tonight is those streets that we allocated from those revenues.”
