More of Cleveland’s streets will be resurfaced this year thanks to last November’s city income tax increase. Wednesday, city officials talked about the new paving program.
Three years ago the city spent about $4.5 million on residential street repairs. Mayor Frank Jackson says the half-percent income tax boost means this year the city will spend $12 million to repair 83 streets. And he says the worst of the city’s 8,000 streets are now priorities.
“In the past that was picked by council choice, the money was split-up evenly among council people. Over the last three years we’ve taken that in-house and we have what we believe to be an objective process with a pavement management study which really gives us an indication of which are the worst streets, and then, we go from there.”
Jackson says an additional $46 million will be spent on 12 major city street projects. Eighty percent of that funding will be covered by the state. Jackson says the plan over the next 16-to-17 years is to have all city streets repaired and maintained to a score of at least 75 out of 100 on its pavement management assessment.