By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press
Although the City of Copperas Cove began collecting the new street maintenance utility fee starting January 1 of this year, locals have not seen any street work done.
The city is in the process of prioritizing projects until enough funds have been collected to begin them.
As of March 2026, the City of Copperas Cove has collected approximately $350,000 from the monthly assessment of the Street Maintenance Fee.
Scott Osburn, Public Works Director, said the City is currently working with Dr. Roshani Hossein, PE, of Halff Associates, Inc. to assist in developing the City’s first Five-Year Street Maintenance Program.
Hossein’s firm has worked with the City before by completing the City’s first Pavement Condition Assessment in 2021-2022.
This assessment looked at the City’s entire transportation network of 158 miles of centerline roads. This assessment ranked each street, its condition, as well as gave costs and types of maintenance/rehabilitation needed.
The City’s roadway measurements do not include state-owned roads, such as the portions of U.S. 190, F.M. 1113, and F.M. 116 that go through the city.
Osburn said the new Five-Year Street Maintenance Program (SMP) that Hossein is developing will help the City know which streets to work on first.
“The Five-Year Street Maintenance Program will evaluate the numerous existing variables (i.e., current street conditions, current Capital Improvement Plan Projects, projected total funding sources available, traveling demand on a given roadway, etc.) to develop a realistic, implementable set of prioritized street maintenance projects for each fiscal year,” Osburn said.
The street maintenance budget each year will be approximately $1.2 million to $1.5 million, which includes construction and engineering costs.
This $1.2-$1.5 million is the amount projected to be raised through the Street Maintenance Utility fee collection each year.
“City staff anticipates completion of the SMP in late June 2026. Following acceptance of the SMP by City Council, City staff will immediately move forward with design work on the first set of roadways, which is estimated to take approximately 2-3 months,” Osburn said.
“Following completion of design, advertising for bid and bid award, City staff estimates that the first wave of actual construction will commence in the September to November 2026 time range.”
The residential street maintenance fee is $10 per residential utility bill. The non-residential fee starts at $20 and goes up, depending on the type of “band” or tier into which a business falls, as determined by the amount of traffic they generate. The cap for all non-residential accounts is $2,500.
There are 494 non-residential utility accounts attached to businesses, churches, nonprofits, and governmental organizations such as the City itself as well as CCISD. The $20 base fee is collected from 50 percent of the nonresidential accounts.
Altogether, 79.5 percent of the city’s nonresidential accounts fall into Bands 1-6, with Band 6 being assessed a monthly fee of $72.70. CCISD, County utility accounts, and nonprofits with utility accounts are exempt from the fee.
The Copperas Cove city council voted last fall to approve the Street Maintenance Utility fee with proposed revisions that the council came to a consensus at its Oct. 7 meeting. However, the decision was not unanimous, with three councilmembers voting against the ordinance as proposed 4-3.
Councilmembers Christina Strohfus, Rita Hogan, Shawn Alzona, and John Hale voted in favor of the ordinance with the proposed changes, and councilmembers Dale Treadway, Vonya Hart, and Jack Smith voted against it.
Treadway said while he supported a street maintenance utility fee, he didn’t support it in its current form, and that $10 and $20 were a” drop in the bucket” to get started.
Hart said after listening to comments from the community, she agreed that the numbers proposed for the fee were not reflective of the community. Smith said he wanted to see the two-year exemption for new businesses removed.
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