1/4% Sales Tax

For the past 6 years, the City has funded the majority of its street maintenance program through the City’s 1/4 cent sales tax for streets, originally approved by the voters in November 2002 and approved again in 2006. Since April 2003, over $7.5 million in sales tax has been collected and the City used the money to: reconstruct, rehabilitate and perform preventive maintenance on identified roadways, purchase street maintenance equipment, and implement a Pavement Management Information System. The pavement management system captures pavement conditions for all City streets and prioritizes street maintenance projects, based upon pavement conditions and available funding.

The program’s objective is to achieve and maintain the best possible City wide overall pavement condition score as possible. The higher the overall condition score, the lower the expense to maintain the roadway system. To insure that the overall condition score remains high, the majority of the funds are spent on maintaining higher scoring roads with surface treatments, while a smaller portion is spent on lower scoring roadways requiring rehabilitation and reconstruction. This technique is a best management practice and has improved the City of Georgetown’s Overall Condition Index by 2% over the past 6 years.

The 08/09 Transportation Services CIP will propose various treatments for over 50 % of the roadway network over the next 5 years. Texas law requires voter approval every four years to keep the tax in place. Therefore, in November of 2010, Georgetown voters will vote on whether to renew the 1/4 cent sales tax for street maintenance for existing streets.