The city is back in the middle of the road.
City lawmakers agreed Monday to spend an coveted half-million dollars on turning the median along parts of Tower Road from an unsightly “mud pickle” into something that resembles landscaping, keeps the street safer and doesn’t cost a fortune to maintain.
Councilman Bob Roth was among others that decided the median along Tower Road was most pickling because of the mud problems it causes, even though there’s another 50 miles of city medians that also cause traffic problems or are unappealing.
The volume of daily traffic also factored into the decision, with one lawmaker arguing that the higher the traffic count the more likely he’d be to vote for a particular unsightly median getting a makeover. Another councilman proposed that they renovate whatever site generated the most complaints.
Tower Road’s divider won on almost all accounts.
The Tower Road median spans 3.2 miles and sees a high volume of traffic, but at a cost of roughly $100,000 per 0.1 mile, only one half-mile stretch will be repaired this year. That half-mile represents just one-half of one percent of all unfinished medians in the city.
The city aims to make the most of their budget by replacing grass and trees with concrete and cobble to cut irrigation costs and increase durability. Although the Tower Road median would take more than six years to complete at the current pace of construction, one-sixth of a hazardous mud pickle is better than a whole, city council members agreed. For years, Aurora has had no money available for median replacements, a project important to generations of city lawmakers.
Wow, no money to finish a median but plenty of money for Gaylord and TABOR violation lawsuits. Right?