Pima County To Spend $29 Million On Roads in Fiscal Year 2021

TUCSON, AZ — Tucson area and Pima County residents can expect smoother driving relatively soon if County officials have anything to say about it. Not far behind Pima County’s announcement last quarter of an additional $10 million boosting fiscal year 2020 road repair funding to $36 million, the County announced Thursday its fiscal year 2021 road repair allocation: $29 million.

The $29 million for fiscal year 2021 – July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021 – is earmarked again for unincorporated county road repairs. In January, every such road’s pavement condition is being evaluated and rated. The County anticipates a May release of the list of roads selected for repair.

Sixty-six percent of the $29 million will go toward local roads, while the remaining 34 percent is slated for improvements on collector and arterial roads.

PAYGO, from which the FY 2021 funding is taken, was approved in November by the Pima County Board of Supervisors. PAYGO funds transportation and other infrastructure projects using existing revenue. PAYGO helps the County decrease property tax rates while helping facilitate County debt payoff.

“Under PAYGO, we will be able to address the condition of our roadway infrastructure system in a comprehensive manner,” wrote Pima County Department of Transportation Director Ana Olivares. “The PAYGO funding plan will allow us to maintain the momentum we started in 2018 as we work to repair every road in the County in the next ten years,” Olivares explained.

In fiscal year 2018, 223 miles of County road repairs cost $17.1 million, paid for with a dedicated property tax for one year. That fiscal year, an additional $6 million – from the County Department of Transportation – was allotted to another 59 miles of collector and arterial pavement preservation.

Fiscal year 2019 was designated to provide 40 miles of unincorporated County road repairs costing $10 million, followed by $36 million in fiscal year 2020 to fix about 160 miles of pavement.

Pima County plans to use Department of Transportation and PAYGO monies to fund $526 million in road preservation and repair efforts during the next decade. County officials hope that doing so will raise the County roads’ rating closer to the 100-point mark on the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) scale. County roads collectively rate about 42 now, County officials reported.