The city doesn’t adequately fund its street repair projects by almost $3 million, according to the Jefferson City public works director.
The city government hosted a “City Coffee” on Wednesday morning at City Hall with Public Works Director Kyle Bruemmer.
Jefferson City’s Public Works Department selects a list of streets each summer to repair, often called the annual mill and overlay project. The city published an invitation for bids to overlay 31,382 feet worth of street throughout Jefferson City.
Bruemmer said the city needs at least $5.2 million for the annual street overlay project, but the city’s half-cent capital improvement sales tax only funds 34 percent of that, or around $1.7 million.
The city’s wastewater division also funds an additional 12 percent of that $5.2 million (or around $624,000), leaving a 54 percent shortfall, or about $2.8 million.
“So if you think we’re hurting, we would be really hurting without this capital improvement (sales tax),” Bruemmer said.
He said this is partly due to a significant increase in the price of asphalt. Bruemmer said asphalt cost $20 a ton in the 1990s, and in 2026, that price rose to $105 a ton. He added one ton of asphalt paves around 5 feet of road.
And while the capital improvement sales tax revenue has increased around 40 percent in the last 15 years, material costs for road repairs have increased 75 percent.
Last year, the city spent around $2.1 million on the street overlay, but city staff members said at the time that total was more than usual because the city had leftover funds from the year before.
For this year’s mill and overlay project, Higgins Asphalt Company proposed $1.9 million and Jefferson Asphalt Company proposed $2 million.
If the city had that $5.2 million, Bruemmer said, most ($2.9 million) would go toward the city’s asphalt roads and the remaining $2.3 million would go toward concrete roads. Bruemmer said the city is planning to put $400,000 toward just concrete roads this year.
The streets division’s operating budget totals $4.8 million, which primarily goes toward personnel, materials and supplies.
Jefferson City voters will decide Aug. 4 whether to renew the city’s capital improvement sales tax for another 10 years. In April, Cole County voters renewed the county’s capital improvement sales tax for 10 years.
Bruemmer included a map showing the city streets part of the street overlay project since 2022. His goal, he said, was to show what the city has completed in recent years.
“We were previewing it yesterday and it was commented, ‘This is really kind of showing what you’re not doing or what you’re not getting to.’ I was like, ‘Well, that wasn’t the intent,'” Bruemmer said.
