Holloway and City Manager Brent Merriman said conversations about some streets and storm water projects took a back seat in 2020 because of the coronavirus.
The city conducted a pavement condition index study in February 2020. Based on the condition of the streets in Xenia, the city plans for a minimum of $800,000 a year to be spent on rehabilitating roads.
Merriman said the pavement study projects the pavement condition will continue to decline unless the city spends about $2.2 million a year on roads to keep up with repairs. The capital improvement plan says the city will need to come up with “an enhanced funding scheme” that will ensure there will be more money committed to the street fund. Xenia voters rejected a streets levy in 2018.
The state gas tax will bolster the street fund in the future, but the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the revenues for that tax in fiscal year 2020.
The city is continuing to explore other options to keep up with road repairs, according to the capital improvement plan.
Streets projects are also funded through the city’s general fund. The city plan states that over 80% of the planned expenses from the general fund in 2021 will be on infrastructure, like resurfacing Bellbrook Avenue, a traffic signal at Greene Way Boulevard and repairs to the South Columbus Street bridge.
Holloway said another major expenditure in the next couple of years will be replacing Fire Station No. 32, located at 869 W. Second St. The aging building needs many repairs.
The city has talked about replacing the station, which was built in the 1960s, since 1995, Merriman said.
Merriman said city staff have talked with Kettering Health Network to lease land they own on Progress Drive and potentially move the fire station there. The pandemic has slowed those discussions down a little bit, he said, so no price has been agreed to.
Replacing the fire station is estimated to cost $4.15 million, Holloway said.
Due to the higher number of calls for service and the growing number of housing developments and other economic development on that side of town, Merriman said it is important that the city have a fire station further west in order to respond to those people and businesses as quickly as possible.
Construction is slated to begin in 2021, according to the CIP.
Holloway said there are no major 2021 projects that the city had planned in the last capital improvement plan that have been pushed off to future years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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