Pearland votes for interlocal agreement with county for road paving

Various sections of Fite Street, Garden Street, Hawk Street, Hillhouse Street and Walnut Street totaling 4.14 miles will get repaved due to an interlocal agreement between the city of Pearland and Brazoria County.

The gist

On July 24, City Council voted 7-0 to enter an interlocal agreement with Brazoria County that would require the county to provide labor, traffic control and equipment to complete pavement restoration in areas identified by the city. The agreement requires the city to provide materials and supplies for the projects.

In a nutshell

Previous interlocal agreements in 2020 and 2021 between Pearland and Brazoria County required the city to undertake base repair and preoverlay work before the county’s team began their portions of the project.

Once on-site, Brazoria County staff handled all asphalt overlay and equipment operations, while city staff contributed their labor in tasks such as raking asphalt, traffic control and flagging according to agenda documents. The agreement’s cost is roughly $827,722.

In their own words

Council Member Tony Carbone expressed concern that the construction on Hawk Street and Hillhouse Street, which are near Dawson High School and could interfere with school operations once it resumes.

“The plan in place currently is to go ahead and conduct operations on Garden Street first, allow school to begin, and allow the new student drivers and parents to become familiar with school traffic and routing,” ROW Coordinator Eric Hammond said. “That allows us some additional runway to work with the school district for the work in that area. Right now we’re forecasted to be near Hawk and Hillhouse during the November Thanksgiving break.”

Council Member Alex Kamkar and Mayor Kevin Cole praised the county as a "good partner" in this agreement and those of years past.

“It’s your tax dollars. It’s your road and bridge dollars that you pay when you renew your vehicle that goes to the county, and its dollars that are coming back into the city to help with certain roadways,” Cole said before adding that the number of road miles that will be addressed in the agreement doubled to over 4 miles from the previous year’s agreement.

Next steps

The agenda documents showed that road paving operations were tentatively scheduled to start between late July and early August. However, on July 24, the city discovered that based on the county’s timeline with other projects, the county would not begin their construction until September.