The Richardson City Council met Monday, December 1, 2025. There were two agenda items that I want to discuss. Video of the full meeting is available, as usual, on the City's website.
Just kidding. The council's special called meeting, held in a back room, wasn't recorded. But I found my way back there and will have a thing or two to say about that meeting in tomorrow's post.
2026 Bond Program — Streets
The first agenda item I want to talk about was the discussion about needs of streets/alleys/sidewalks in the 2026 bond program. In 2010, the city had a $20 million bond program for streets. In 2015, there was a $31 million bond program. In 2021, there was a $93 million bond program. To address the remaining work list in a 2026 bond program would take an estimated $207 million. An exercise conducted by the city council on October 6 penciled in about half of that, $90-115 million, for a 2026 bond program for street repair.
There was talk Monday night whether we are getting anywhere with all this money. Mayor Pro Tem Ken Hutchenrider was on the side of the doubters. As evidence he pointed to the city's Pavement Condition Index (PCI). The 2014 score was 67 out of 100, which was considered "Satisfactory", but the 2020 score was 59, which was lower but still considered "Satisfactory."
Mayor Pro Tem Hutchenrider said, "In the last bond program, we sunk quite a bit of money into roads. That was our priority. It looks like we're trying to do that again, and yet I look at this and it looks like we've slid backwards." He wondered, "Do we need to call a time-out?"
Mayor Amir Omar responded to Hutchenrider's pessimism by saying, "I share your concern, but I also have a little more hope that we're not actually going in the wrong direction. The last PCI scores were in 2020 before the last bond was done...A rescore might be a bit better in terms of our overall streets."
Indeed, progress is visually clear from two maps presented showing streets and alleys in poor condition (a PCI of 25 or less), one from 2020 (i.e, from before the 2021 bond program) and one from today (i.e., after the 2021 bond program). Eyeballing those two maps suggests we are making progress.
My conclusion from the cheap seats is that the mayor's comprehension of the situation is more realistic than the mayor pro tem's. Unless...and work with me here. Unless Hutchenrider is thinking of some genius, paradigm-changing idea to build more roads with less money, but to build less roadway without loss of connectedness. That might be worth calling a time-out to think through. But Hutchenrider went on to say, "I mean, I, I'm not the expert." So, no genius ideas will be coming from Hutchenrider.
Back to reality. We're left with City Manager Magner's summary of the current state of play: "I've said, as manager and prior as deputy, and Dan said it, when folks would ask, are we catching up, my answer was always no, but we're not falling behind at the same rate. To truly catch-up we should probably be spending $200 million a bond program on streets." That answer wasn't picked up by anyone as an affordable strategy either, although Council member Dan Barrios did say he would favor a street bond package at the high end of the suggested range, $115 million rather than $90 million.
That left Hutchenrider with a plea to City Manager Don Magner, "Tell us what the best strategy is." City Manager Magner's answer should be, "OK." Seven amateurs on a city council should not be the ones coming up with various road construction techniques anyway. They should be listening to the proposals by city staff and either accepting their judgment or explaining why they can't. I won't take the time to get into this here, but if the city council formed an advisory committee of subject matter experts on this, independent of city staff, to help them form opinions on technical matters such as this, then I would think the public interest would be well served. Having experts advising council members by vetting staff suggestions should be tried more.
Now back to the problem at hand. The biggest strategic question raised Monday night is whether to move ~$2 million of annual concrete panel replacement costs from the Street Rehabilitation Fund into the 2026 Bond program. That would "free up" ~$2 million in the Street Rehabilitation Fund for possible other uses, to be decided when the 2027 budget is being set next summer. My guess is that this will be City Manager Magner's recommendation.
"Past bond echoes heard,
Twenty. Thirty-one. Ninety-three.
Still the roads call out."
—h/t ChatGPT
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