GREEN VALLEY, Ariz (KGUN9-TV) - Pima County Roads are such a sore subject drivers can feel it in the seat of their pants.
Now there's an idea to stretch road repair dollars farther but property owners would have to be willing to pay more.
Roads in Green Valley need help. Some make an alligator look smooth.
Now a Green Valley organization has an idea to make Pima County's shallow pool of road repair dollars a little deeper--invite Green Valley property owners to cover half the cover of repairs to their roads.
Green Valley Council President Don Weaver says Green Valley subdivisions have 68 miles of road. 46 miles are so bad they're classed as failed.
Weaver says, “Failed is basically where you've got to go in and completely take out about three inches of asphalt and do what we call mill and fill. And it's very expensive."
The Green Valley Council is not a government. It represents Green Valley residents and Home Owners Associations.
Don Weaver will ask his board to endorse an unusual idea.
Here's how the idea would work. 51 percent of the people in a homeowners association decide they are so fed up with the roads, they ask the county to create a County Improvement District that covers their area. The County Improvement District would pay half the cost of fixing the road. The county would pay the rest. And how they decide who pays how much depends on the number of parcels in the neighborhood. It would probably work out to maybe a thousand dollars per parcel.
The exact cost would go up or down based on the cost of repair and the number of properties.
Bob Baker is one property owner willing to pay a bit more.
He says, “It will improve it immensely. It looks terrible for the area that's here--our beautiful homes---then to have this beat up old thing you'd find in South Missouri Drive is ridiculous."
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry says this idea's worth examining but he's worried it would divide the county between neighborhoods that can afford to help pay for road repair and those that can't.
