Copperas Cove staff outline proposed "Let's Fix Our Streets" utility; businesses press for lower commercial rates

City staff presented details of a proposed street maintenance utility designed to raise dedicated revenue for repair and preservation of Copperas Cove streets, and heard extensive public comment from residents and business owners who said commercial rates and equity protections require more work.

Public Works Director Scott Osborne said the city's 2022 pavement condition assessment by Lockwood Andrews & Newman found 55% of the city's pavement network rated poor or failed and estimated $52.4 million to bring the entire network to "excellent" condition. "This is actually our sixth of 7 town hall meetings on the Let's Fix Our Street street maintenance utility campaign," Osborne said, describing the study and a NewGen feasibility analysis the city used to model fees.

The NewGen study proposes allocating costs by vehicle trip generation and expressing each parcel's demand as a single-family-equivalent (SFE). Under the model staff described, a $10 per-SFE residential fee would produce roughly $600,000 annually; NewGen calculated roughly 34,000 SFE trips citywide (about 38% residential, 62% nonresidential). Osborne told the meeting that to raise the roughly $4.6 million a year the city's 2022 analysis said would be needed to achieve…