Do We Trust the Lubbock City Council to Take Care of Roads?

About a year ago, the Lubbock City Council voted for the City of Lubbock to take on the responsibility of Slide Road from Loop 289 out to CR 1585. The council only agreed to this after the state was willing to make improvements to it. I asked a council member about it at the time, and they said this is normal. It may be normal, but my first thought was, 'Can Lubbock take on this responsibility? They have a hard time with the roads that they have.'

Last week, the Lubbock City Council did it again. They have now asked to take over 19th Street and Avenue Q inside the Loop. Again, they're only going to take them after the State of Texas improves them. Avenue Q has had a lot of problems with pedestrians getting hit by cars, and the State of Texas is going to add medians and lighting to hopefully protect those who cross.

Get our free mobile app

Last November, Lubbock voters rejected the city council and their $174.5 million dollar road bond. I think a lot of that had to do with the lack of maintenance we're seeing in what we have, and a $65 million dollar+ Citizen's Tower* renovation without voter approval. Now the city council is having meetings to figure out what went wrong and how they're going to pay for the roads that we already have.

I have a few questions for the citizens of Lubbock and the City Council. Can Lubbock afford to take on more when we can’t even take care of what we have?

Can we trust the Lubbock City Council to take care of 19th Street and Avenue Q? I don’t.

*EDIT: In an earlier version of this article, I stated that the City Council misappropriated funds. I used a term that was not correct for what I was trying to say. There was no misappropriation of funds, so I changed it to say that it was done without a vote. Another thing to point out is that Citizens Tower and much of the maintenance issues that have occurred in Lubbock are not necessarily due to the current City Council. In my opinion it has been a reoccurring issue for many, many years.