CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — We checked in with Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni to check in on topics of interest to our viewers.
Here’s what Zanoni had to say to several of our questions in our latest installment of “Ask the Manager.”
KRIS 6 – “The topic this month is road construction. With the approval of Proposition A, that is the talk of the town right now. I want to ask, for those who don’t know, what is Proposition A and what was involved in that?
Zanoni – “So Proposition A was one of three propositions that the voters approved as part of our 2020 bond program. And that proposition had street projects, 22 street projects throughout the city.”
KRIS 6 – “When looking at this being done, is it a handful of streets at a time or are we going to see it you know each street being done at the same time?”
Zanoni – “You may see some simultaneously, we are mindful not to work too much in the same corridor so that businesses especially don't have a significant impact. Just one street in a heavy commercial corridor is enough to be a concern to some small business, so we will strategize exactly where and what part of town will work and be mindful of other construction in other cities and the state. TxDOT does work as well in some of those corridors. We are going to be mindful of time. Right the city's history has not always been that great in terms of delivering bond programs quickly and in fact we are still doing some of the older bond program work and so the goal is to get this bond program done in about a 4-5 year time period.”
KRIS 6 – “When we are talking about the renovations and the construction, is there a variance of a total reconstruction kind of what we are seeing on Morgan Avenue or are we some getting tinkered with you know potholes fixed, you know sidewalks?”
Zanoni – “That's a good distinction and we want the viewers to understand that the bond program these are big ticket, heavy reconstruction projects. The bond program takes care of big arterial roads. Those are roads where there is a lot of traffic volume and it's a full reconstruction. The street is really reached it's useful life, maybe 30-50 years old and then the utilities underneath as well have reached their useful life. So that is one reason that construction takes so long is that we are going well before the street replacing the water lines replacing the sewer lines, gas lines, maybe some telecommunication work might be happening, too.”
KRIS 6 – “Do we think time is what caused some of the streets to be in disrepair, or are they just old streets?”
Zanoni – “No, not really. It is really from a lack of maintenance, so once you put a brand new street down you have to start a maintenance program and unfortunately we have not had the best track record of doing that. But that is changing, though. As the community knows I have made it a priority to focus on public works that does our street maintenance. And so every street has an annual, then a 5-year, 10-year 12-year, 15-year maintenance plan so there are a lot of improvements in public works and more to come. We are proud of the leadership team that is there and we are glad the community likes the changes that they are seeing.”
KRIS 6 – “Fantastic. So I guess we can see a lot of changes on the horizon with that, we are going to wrap up here. Thank you so much, Mr. Zanoni. I appreciate it once again. If you don't know, the viewers at home, we are going to do this once a month. The subject is always changing and you can ask questions to Mr Zanoni at our website KRISTV.com and with that I'll let you go.”
Our next segment will run in December. If you have any questions for Zanoni, please ask them here because this segment is for you, the viewers at home.
