Council members spent a substantial portion of their Nov. 25 meeting pressing the administration for clarity on the city's street-repair strategy and whether routine maintenance funding has been shifted entirely into larger capital projects. Councilors said they were concerned that eliminating a recurring budget line of about $400,000 would leave the city further behind amid what one member described as a roughly 15-year backlog in repairs.

Several speakers said the projects included paving components for Ralston Avenue and Ottawa Avenue and that a large Hopkins Street section is estimated for next year, but they differed over whether that approach replaces the city's historical street-repair schedule. One participant estimated that current projects would complete about 1.8 miles of paving next year, a figure another council member said was "not that far off" from the recent pace but still insufficient to close the long-term deficit.

Councilors asked the administration to provide a clear, street-by-street presentation of priorities and past commitments. A member requested that the city's street engineer, Dave Prock (identified in the record as the city's street specialist), return to present his prior analysis of which streets were slated for repair and how project bundling affects routine maintenance lists. Council said seeing the schedule or an online list would help determine whether some paving should be reallocated back into a line-item street program.

Administration representatives emphasized that paving for Ralston and Ottawa is included within the design and bid packages of those larger projects, and that Hopkins Street work is planned though it was not included line-by-line in the street budget. They noted that Ralston is a wider, more expensive road to pave and therefore was handled as part of a project rather than the routine street program.

The discussion did not produce a formal vote on changing the budget that night; council members said they wanted the engineer's presentation and additional detail on miles, costs and timing before deciding whether to restore a discrete street-repair allocation.