Springfield voters are considering a 3-cent gas tax in the November election. The funds will be used to repair the city’s streets.
Springfield residents already pay a 3 cent gas tax to maintain streets. The proposed doubling of that tax would help the city repair its roads.
City Engineer Jeff Paschall takes me to the corner of Marcola Road and 19th Street in Springfield. As trucks lumber by, he points out the wear and tear on the pavement.
“Marcola Road is one of the streets on our 5-year priority list." Paschall says, "It’s a heavy truck route, heavy arterial. It doesn’t look really bad when you just look at it. You see some cracking. You see some wearing, some rutting, things like that.”
Paschall says the city doesn’t want this road to get much worse because it will cost more to reconstruct the road than to put on a new overlay. This is just one example of the roads the city says need fixing. One penny of the 3 cent tax would go to fix residential streets. The other 2 would go to arterials and collectors. Springfielders are also considering a tax on marijuana sales.