A provision in the North Carolina Senate-approved budget plan could eliminate millions of dollars Fayetteville receives each year for street maintenance and repairs through the Powell Bill.
The Powell Bill provides municipalities with funds to pay for a range of street improvements and repairs, and it has done so since 1951, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. It provided $185 million to municipalities last year for road maintenance, NCDOT reported.
But this year, cities with a population over 150,000 may not receive any Powell Bill funding, per the state Senate budget. Those cities include Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville and Cary.
The City of Fayetteville received about $7 million dollars last year, according to a memo from the city’s manager’s office shared with CityView. The memo states the city’s Powell Bill funds pay for a wide range of public services, including routine street maintenance like repairing potholes, patching roads and sealing cracks; maintenance of traffic signs, speed humps and street markings; and street infrastructure upkeep like sweeping, mowing and debris removal.
In response to the budget cuts, the Fayetteville City Council approved a resolution on April 28 to send to the county’s representatives in the General Assembly advocating for the preservation of the funding. The resolution described the Powell Bill funds as an “essential tool to protect the economic vitality, infrastructure integrity, and public safety of the community.” It urged state lawmakers to keep the funding intact for Fayetteville and other municipalities.
“The City of Fayetteville hereby expresses its strong opposition to the proposed elimination of Powell Bill funding and respectfully urges the North Carolina General Assembly to preserve the critical funding source in the final state budget to ensure municipalities across North Carolina can continue to maintain infrastructure essential to public safety, economic development, and community well-being,” the resolution states.
City officials have emphasized that Fayetteville is the only city with a population above 150,000 located in a Tier 1 county, the most economically-distressed tier among three rankings given to counties by the North Carolina Department of Commerce. This means the city has less tax dollars to pay for things like infrastructure, as compared to the state’s other major cities located in Tier 2 and Tier 3 counties.
“The elimination of Powell Bill funding, as proposed in the draft state budget, would have a direct and significant negative impact on the City’s ability to maintain critical infrastructure,” the memo states. “It would force the City to either defer essential maintenance projects or shift the financial burden to local taxpayers. Powell Bill funds are foundational to the City’s ability to maintain roadway safety, support economic development, and preserve neighborhood quality of life.”
The city said that over the last three years the funds have allowed the resurfacing of approximately 28 miles of city streets, slurry sealing of 14 miles of city streets, and micro-surfacing of 15 miles of city streets. Slurry sealing and microsurfacing are pavement preservation treatments used to extend the life of existing asphalt surfaces.
Altogether, over the past three fiscal years, the city has received about $19 million in Powell Bill funds, the memo states.
The Powell Bill funding also accounts for nearly a third of Fayetteville’s non-revenue-generating Public Services Department budget, the memo said. “Given recent fiscal constraints, reliance on Powell Bill funds for operational expenses has increased,” it states.
The city says it is in need of significant street maintenance in the next two years that it planned to pay for with the Powell Bill funds, including resurfacing about 14 miles of city streets and micro-surfacing approximately 13 miles of city streets. Although most current Powell Bill-funded projects have already been completed or have the necessary money set aside for their completion, it’s unclear yet how the city will pay for the anticipated street maintenance in future years.
“The Powell Bill is the only source currently used for these types of activities with the exception of the portion of the 2022 bonds dedicated for street maintenance,” Marketing and Communications Director Loren Bymer told CityView. “Currently City staff is still in very early stages of determining if any options are available if Powell Bill ends; however, it is important to know that the majority of the projects and funds are completed, in progress or obligated already. As council requested, we are preparing additional information to share on related transportation projects in recent years with the sources of those funds.”
Urgent request
Assistant City Manager Jodi Phelps explained the significance of the funding loss to the city council at a council meeting earlier this week. She said it was crucial to send the resolution now before the North Carolina House votes on the Senate’s proposed budget.
The Senate adopted its budget proposal on April 17. The state House will advance its own proposal this month, after which the two chambers will negotiate a compromise of the budget plans before the start of the fiscal year on July 1.
“We want to make sure we get this in the hands of the members of the General Assembly this week so that we have time,” Phelps said. “We don’t know when the House is going to take up the budget, but we want to make sure we engage in that education and make sure everyone understands the importance of Powell Bill funding for our city and cities that are also our size and larger than us.”
When asked by Council Member Mario Benavente why the Senate had decided to exclude the funding, Phelps said she didn’t know but it may have to do with Hurricane Helene recovery funding. State legislators previously told council members and other local lawmakers at a February meeting that funding needs for Western North Carolina would be a significant focus in the legislature this year.
“I don’t want to speak to what anyone may have thought of in their proposal, but I do understand that in Raleigh there’s conversations about Hurricane Helene support cutting funding [elsewhere], but I’m not sure,” Phelps said. “I’m not the General Assembly, so I don’t want to speak to what was in their mind.”
Mayor Mitch Colvin said funding for street maintenance should be a bipartisan issue.
“This is an issue to me that transcends politics because I think both Republicans and Democrats understand the importance of resources and street paving and those things that make communities better,” Colvin said. “What’s unique about this is if this targets larger urbanized areas. We’re the only one that’s located in a Tier 1 county designation, which has special exceptions for resources. So I think that’s why it’s important today that this is before us.”