As Twin Falls grows, the streets department races to keep up with maintenance

Twin Falls City Council will hear presentations and budget request from the streets, water, wastewater, transportation, economic development departments at their July 22 meeting.

• City council will have until late August to adopt the 2025 budget .
• Before adoption, the council spends seven meetings discussing the budget, to give the public ample opportunity for input and to have their questions answered.
• Council meetings are at 5 p.m. on Mondays at City Hall. Agendas, live stream video and archived video can be found here .

RELATED| It's city budget discussion season in Twin Falls, and the council wants your input

( Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)

“We're still trying our best to improve every year, but it feels like it's getting harder and harder,” Josh Baird told Idaho News 6.

As Public Works Director, Baird oversees the streets, water and wastewater departments.

"I guess part of it just recognizing the cost of streets has gone — as well as everything else drastically high. And so the dollar that we had just a few years ago, didnt go nearly as far today.”

Like everywhere in Idaho, Twin Falls has seen its share of growth ,and you don't have to spend long on Blue Lakes Boulevard to feel it.

“Recognizing that we're growing, every single time there's a new subdivision that's annexed into the city means more roads, more waterline, more waste waterlines that we have to maintain,” Baird said.

As part of the city's budget process, streets department will present their annual updates along with a $4.2 million dollar budget request for fiscal year 2025.

The council will vote to adopt the budget by late August.

Baird told me the majority of the streets budget is for maintenance as the department tries to keep up with traffic.

Every five years they map every street in the city, documenting every crack and pothole to make a prioritized list of where to spend their money

"We use that to do our best to take the small amount of budget that we have — even though it probably seems big to the public right, ... $1.9 million for chipseal is a big number,” Baird said. “But when we have the number of roads we have, we do our best to make that small amount of money go as far as possible, and trying to put it where it's needed the most.”

$235,000 for sidewalk projects, as well as $75,000 for a match program to assist homeowners in replacing sidewalks across their property.

As far as when the streets department will be caught up with the traffic?

"I don't think we're ever caught up,” Baird said. “We do our best to kind of keep status quo.”