Over two dozen roads in West Lake Hills are slated to undergo maintenance throughout this summer as part of the city’s 2023-24 street maintenance plan.

Work consists of roadway and drainage work, according to city documents. The update provided at the March 27 City Council meeting serves as the 50% completion update for the annual maintenance plan, City Administrator Trey Fletcher said.

The details

Spanning throughout the city with a focus on residential areas, the plans outline a number of different types of maintenance for each project. According to the city and the Texas Department of Transportation, types of road maintenance include:

• Mill and overlay: grinds up existing asphalt and replaces it with new pavement
• Crack seal: fills up cracks in the road’s surface
• Surface preservation: treatment applied to the road to prevent or slow further deterioration

In addition to road maintenance, a handful of projects also address drainage through the replacement of culverts and improvement of stormwater drainage systems. Once such project is located on the border between West Lake Hills and Rollingwood at Westbank Market.

A number of revisions were approved at the meeting, including the removal of Sprague Lane and Carrara from the 2023-24 road maintenance list.

The total amount allocated for the projects is $886,400, which includes $148,000 for contingency funds.

The background

The street maintenance plan is funded through the city’s street maintenance sales tax, a 0.5% tax applied to all taxable purchases made in the city, according to the city’s website. The tax was approved by voters in 2021 and will need to be reapproved in 2025 to stay in effect.

Prior to the tax, the city had no dedicated revenue system in place to consistently fund road maintenance, according to previous Community Impact reporting.

The 2023 Pavement Evaluation Report completed by Road Asset Services for West Lake Hills outlines the condition of roads in the city. While the city overall scored a 72 out of 100 on the health of its roads, categorized as “satisfactory,” the report stresses the financial importance of preventative maintenance rather than reactive maintenance when it comes to roadways.

Roads tend to deteriorate slowly at first, but at a certain point begin to decline rapidly, according to the report. Delaying preventative measures and allowing road health to decline could result in roads costing eight to 10 times more money to repair in the long run, the report said.

What’s next

Contractor Walter P Moore Engineering will determine a schedule for the order of project completion at a future date, and work is expected to be completed this summer, Fletcher said.