Meridian City Council members liked what they heard from the Public Works Department about a proposed $7.5 million road pavement plan for city roads and streets.

    Some council members expressed concern, however, about overall costs, whether or not some residential streets would be skipped, and if there was enough focus on street curbs and drainage.

    Assistant Public Works Director Mike Van Zandt updated the council at a Tuesday work session at city hall. Van Zandt said a key component of Public Works’ plan was to focus on primary city streets like Eighth Street and 22nd, 18th, 23rd and 25th avenues. Private contractors would do these large jobs. The remaining funds would be used to purchase equipment and material to run an on-going city street pavement program.

    A focus would be to pave main roads, or collector points.

    “Collectively, they total about 70 miles or about 20 percent of the entire city,” Van Zandt said. “There is about 340 miles of roads in the city, but these collector points carry most of the traffic — almost 80 percent. To get these paved is significant to our plan.”

    Ward 1 Councilman Dr. George Thomas was glad to see the plan, but cautioned against the $7.5 million cost and questioned whether it would be enough. The last time the city implemented a road-paving plan, it cost $4.5 million and only 20 miles of roads were paved, he said.

    “We finally have a plan and it’s good and what I see of the plan for the small streets is good,” Thomas said. “My real concern is the last time we got in the paving business, we couldn’t afford it.”

    Thomas said a possible solution would be to raise the food and beverage tax.    

    “If we raised the food and beverage tax by 2 percent, that would be more than enough to pave all this infrastructure,” Thomas said.

    Council President Randy Hammon was concerned that secondary streets would not get as much attention.

    “They are the ones where people are paying the taxes to finance this,” Hammon said. “When we pave these streets, people notice it.”

    Ward 2 Councilman Dustin Markham was concerned with drainage problems on some streets.

    “Right now we have concerns that water is spilling over into resident’s front yards and washing away,” Markham said. “I hope the amount of money they are proposing to spend will address some of these concerns.”

    Meridian Mayor Percy Bland said he felt there was enough feedback to proceed with the purchase of equipment and asphalt to pave smaller residential streets and leave the heavy paving to contractors.

    “We’re ready to get started on the pavement plan,” Bland said. “We’re going to put a $7.5 million pavement plan out there and big part of it is getting these major arteries done and we felt good that we have the council’s support.”