TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - Crews in Toledo work year-round to fill potholes, repave streets, and address other preventative maintenance measures on bumpy roads.
Currently, the city is working on devising a plan that will ensure that Toledoans are able to drive smoothly, and Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson says that all monetary options are being considered to reach the goal of fixing the roads.
Some Toledo City Council members have brought up the idea of putting forth an income tax increase for residents to vote on next year. Mayor Hicks-Hudson has said that's not the only solution, and no final decision on how to come up with the funds has been made yet.
"We haven't made any decision about ways to fund our infrastructure repairs, there are things such as increasing the income tax revenue, but the most important thing is that we need to isolate and identify those dollars and keep them in the capital improvement fund so that they can be used for roads," she said.
Mayor Hicks-Hudson also says that the City of Toledo has lost almost $17 million from its local government fund, which is allocated from the state of Ohio.
"($17 million) is about the amount of money that we would need to begin to do a significant repair of our streets. I bring that up because that's one of the things that we're looking at is getting some of those dollars back from the state. They're sitting on at least a billion dollars' worth of funds that they could return back to local governments," she said. "Now we're looking at shifting that burden to our citizens, unfortunately. That's either through income taxes or possibly property levies or some other things."
The mayor isn't ruling out any of the available options at this time.
"Everything's on the table. But one of the things that I promised was to really look internally at what we're doing to ensure that we are really being as wise with the tax dollars that we currently have. We're looking at every avenue that might be available to us," said Mayor Hicks-Hudson. "We're deciding, and we're looking at what people can bear, as well. It's not just something that I'm looking at from the perspective of only one way. I've got to look at it from the perspective of what our citizens can afford, what our businesses can afford, and also what we can't afford not to do. We can't afford to continue to have our roads and our infrastructure the type of condition that it's in."
While an income tax increase or another measure could be the solution put before city residents, it's a decision that Mayor Hicks-Hudson isn't taking lightly.
"We have to do that (fix the roads.) We must do that for so many reasons," she said. "It's now in my lap for us to make a decision, and they're hard decisions that are going to have to be made."
The mayor does plan to present to city council on December 8 the city's current levy authorization, which is up for renewal in 2016, so that it can be placed on the March primary ballot.
