Aurora lawmakers mull asking voters again for road funds

AURORA |  City officials say they don’t want to take “no” for an answer when it comes to asking voters to build more roads without raising new taxes.

Aurora City Council is considering a ballot measure that would ask voters to approve a $4.9 million tax extension for the next 15 years to fund nearly $500 million in transportation and infrastructure projects that have been needed since 2012, when a similar measure was proposed. Extending that tax would be mean voters who own a $200,000 home would continue to pay $27 a year in property taxes.  

In 2012, Aurora residents voted down a tax extension for 21 road improvement projects throughout the city. The question asked voters to extend a mill levy that was set to expire and would have generated about $5.8 million per year for city officials to use on projects including road widening, median improvements, new turn lanes, and new sidewalks and bike paths.

Aurora City Councilman Bob LeGare, who spearheaded that ballot question said this time the money would not be dedicated to specific projects such as light rail parking garages, a suggestion that was unpopular with voters in the last election, but rather would be set aside in a restricted fund for transportation projects that would annually change. 

“This gives us funds to where through our policy committee process, we can allocate that money on an annual basis,” he said. 

In LeGare’s proposal to the council, he said the projects would be determined by public meetings and citizen surveys. The city’s Infrastructure and Operations Policy committee would review the projects and present those findings to the council by fall.

“One year, we might decide we’re dedicating that $5 million to landscape medians, maybe the next year it goes to alley paving,” he said. 

Aurora’s roads are feeling the impact of supporting the state’s third-largest population, said Chris Carnahan, public works operations manager for Aurora. A 2009 inventory of  Aurora’s roadway network taken by the Public Works Department showed about 60 percent of the roads were rated in good condition, while 40 percent were rated in fair or poor condition. 

In March, the Public Works Department told council that the $11.8 million provided for repaving over the next 5 years as part of the city’s 2014 Capital Improvement Program will only be enough to maintain, but not improve, the city’s massive road network. The city has roughly $1 billion in roads, according to the department. 

“Forty years ago when we were building major streets, we were really underestimating how much traffic was going to be running on our streets,” Carnahan said. “A lot of the roads are under-designed for the traffic they’re carrying now. Unless we put money into maintaining our street network, it’s going to start declining to a point where it’s going to be hard to maintain.”

LeGare said he is optimistic that this year’s ballot measure will pass with an improving economy. He added that the results of the city’s 2013 community survey, which was sent to around 3,000 randomly selected Aurora voters and completed by 25 percent of them last fall, showed residents supported using tax increases to fund transportation projects.

One in five voters who participated in the survey mentioned reducing traffic, repairing roads and adding bike paths as areas that should be improved to enhance the quality of life in Aurora. A majority of the voters surveyed also said they supported a property tax increase of $27 per year on a $200,000 home to fund transportation projects.