STARKVILLE — Aldermen will vote today on a 2022-25 capital improvement plan.

City Engineer Edward Kemp presented the proposed capital improvement plan for the current term at the board’s work session Friday. This “road map” is broken up into different sections of capital improvements, with a $1.625 million budget per year.

“Everything we have ever done has always been bonded, and now with more tax being available that is a primary source of funds for the $1.625 million,” Kemp said.

The majority of improvement funds will go to road repairs — $1 million a year for street overlay. The rest of the funds will be $200,000 for drainage, $250,000 for traffic signal and protection upgrades, $125,000 for sidewalk and trail upgrades and $75,000 dedicated to a local match fund for the city to use when applying for matching grants, equating to $6.5 million over four years.

Kemp said his department evaluated every street and road in the city, prioritizing them into categories. He said major arterials — Highway 12 or Highway 182 — are state streets and not the city’s responsibility, and neither are private roads. Minor arterials, such as Main Street, are the largest streets maintained by the city and the highest priority, followed by second tier collector streets, such as Yellow Jacket Drive, and lastly local streets.

“We took all the roads that we’re responsible for and we set up a typical overlay schedule for those,” Kemp said. “What we think is that minor arterials — those are your Louisville Street, Montgomery, Jackson — those are your major corridors that connect the town. Those need to be overlaid every 10 years.”

In order to fully complete the cycle of repavement within a four-year plan, Kemp said the city needs to overlay about 8.2 miles per year, or $1.8 million.

Kemp said his goal with road repairs is giving a higher classification on improving the major roads that everyone uses and less to local streets, but knows that as things change, the city will have to adjust its plan at times.

“As we continue to strive and put an emphasis on some of the higher classifications instead of trying to do long stretches at a time, I do think that we will get closer to the goal,” Kemp said.

The city’s drainage plan will put a priority on upgrading Northside and Colonial Drives’ drainage systems.

Northside Drive has not seen any major flooding, Kemp said, but has had erosion issues for quite some time. He said he wants to improve the channel all the way from Northside Drive to Reed Road.

Colonial Drive’s drainage channel is a set of pipes with issues that date back to 2009. Kemp said he plans to update the pipes, beginning construction around summer 2022.

“At some point in the past, the city or city contractor coordinated some plastic pipes where it used to be an open channel,” Kemp said. “Those pipes have failed. One of the two pipes has fully collapsed, so we’re only getting about half of the conveyance originally designed for that. So, the recommendation is to go in and remove all of those failed corrugated plastic pipes and reestablish it as an open channel.”

The remainder of drainage funds will fund the changing out of old-style inlets that are susceptible to clogging, and a few places around town plagued by plastic pipes will be replaced.

Kemp said he wants to install four different road signals around town — Louisville Street and Academy Road; Louisville and Lynn Lane; Louisville and Yellow Jacket Drive; and University Drive and Montgomery Street.

While Kemp laid out a potential 36 total projects over the next four years for capital improvements, he said he knows the city cannot accomplish, or afford, all of them. He said the board can evaluate the plan and decide what needs to be top priorities.

“This is a dynamic plan,” Kemp said. “It’s got to have the flexibility to change based on conditions that we see. Budgetary is one condition. Maybe we have a boom, and people start buying even more stuff from Amazon than they have been. We would get so much more sales tax and then we need to modify the plan.”

Ward 5 Alderman Hamp Beatty said he liked that minor arterials were of first concern but said he is worried about some streets further down on the priority list, such as Hospital Road, which is in deplorable condition, and he believes its repavement should not be put off much longer.

“We’ll patch it, but what’s it going to look like in a few years when it’s completely done for?” Beatty asked.

Ward 2 Alderman Sandra Sistrunk said she is impressed with the plan, saying she remembers years during her tenure on the board when there was no construction at all on road repairs or other improvements throughout the city. She said the main reason she decided to run for alderman in the first place was because she wanted to fight for spending money on better roads.

“To get to the level to do this kind of work is quite an accomplishment in terms of planning and getting,” Sistrunk said. “There are always more projects and plans than there is money, and that’s where you start to get into policy decisions.”