The full story
On Jan. 31, Mayor Kevin Cole requested that Pearland City Council discuss the city’s progress on sidewalk and street maintenance, and put a plan of action together to address the city’s aging roads by its Feb. 12 meeting.
“It’s no secret that we’ve been behind in street and sidewalk repairs for quite some time,” Cole said in the meeting.
Due to the 2022 and 2023 droughts, Brazoria County’s roads have suffered severe deterioration, forcing the county to prioritize road overlays as opposed to rebuilds, Cole said.
“That’s going to affect the projects that we had teed up, because all four of them were going to be rebuilds,” Cole said. “As we go through that, we’re going to have to figure out how, where and what we do with the county. It’s going to change our plan a little bit with the county.”
The cost
In his note, he suggested the city pay for road updates by pulling recovered funds from local municipal utility districts or the Hughes Road bond project, which Harris County will cover as part of a cost-sharing agreement with the city.
Municipal utility districts, or MUDs, are special governmental entities created by the state to provide water and wastewater services, and to maintain drainage facilities within its boundaries, according to the city’s website.
Pearland can access $1.5 million in recovered funds from the MUDs within the city and $4 million from the Hughes Road bond project, according to an email from the mayor.
In May 2023, Pearland voters approved a $181.4 million bond project, which included $26.1 million for street, bridge and sidewalk improvements.
Some context
According to a city staff presentation, Pearland has hundreds of lane miles of streets and sidewalks, including:
- 980 lane miles of street network
- 617 miles of sidewalk
A majority of the roads that were graded as “fair” or “below” were residential streets or secondary thoroughfares, and over 50 centerline miles will need repair and restoration, city staff said.
“We take a scientific approach to our roadways,” Cole said. “People want to know, 'Why is my road not being worked on?' ... Because there’s a worse one, and we have science to back it up that it’s in greater need than yours is.”
Next steps
In fall 2023, the city entered an interlocal agreement with Brazoria County to restore Garden Road, Hawk Road and Hillhouse Road, which have been completed, city staff said. As part of the agreement, the county will also support overlays on Walnut Street and Fite Road this year.
Because future interlocal agreements with Brazoria County would focus on overlay paving only, the city will need to evaluate how it will fund projects that require a substantial restoration more closely, city staff said.
