North San Antonio Edition | October 2024

Revitalizing the city From the cover

The big picture

San Antonio bond projects, 2022-27 Street and park projects account for 67% of the bond. Streets: $504.6M

refresh that infrastructure,” Whyte said. Peláez also said this is the first bond to include funding for affordable housing. $150 million of bond funds are aimed at creating and improving affordable housing in five categories. These include $45 million for homeowner rehabilitation and preservation projects; $40 million to improve rental housing acquisition, rehabilitation and preservation; $35 million for building affordable rental homes; $25 million to connect unhoused residents with housing resources; and $5 million for building affordable homes for San Antonians. “[Affordable housing] is something that the city has been pushing for, though we need to make sure that any new multifamily housing project that we do, whether it’s through the bond or not,

The 2022-27 Bond is 41% larger than the 2017-22 bond, and is the largest issued in San Antonio’s history, according to city documents. It was designed to meet future needs and keep pace with a growing population of around 16,000- 22,000 new residents each year, said John Courage, San Antonio District 9 council member. “We really need to look at what the future needs are going to be three to five years ahead of time in order to keep up with the pace,” Courage said. District 10 council member Marc Whyte said the size of the bond was required to update aging infrastructure so the city can continue to grow. “[San Antonio] has aging infrastructure throughout each of the districts in San Antonio. So this money is going to be put to good use to help the city’s connectivity, help us continue to grow and help

Parks: $303.9M Drainage: $175M Housing: $150M Safety: $78.3M Facility: $62.1M

$1.274B total

SOURCE: CITY OF SAN ANTONIO/COMMUNITY IMPACT

is done responsibly. [City officials] have to ensure that they won’t have any sort of negative impact on the quality of life for any neighborhood that the project might be going next to,” Whyte said.

Zooming in

Current stages of development for 2022-27 Bond projects

Complete: 0.92%

Predesign: 4.2%

The bond projects are different for each area of the city and include a total of 1,804 miles of repaved streets, adding and expanding sidewalks, and building new roads, Courage said. Whyte said projects that focus on infrastructure support and traffic congestion will help District 10 residents the most. Peláez said drainage projects will reduce low-water road closures during heavy rains, and improvements to the roads and sidewalks will facilitate a better traffic flow for pedestrians. Courage said several projects overhaul major intersections, including the extension on Sonterra Boulevard, which will reconstruct the dead end

Design: 64.5%

Construction: 30.38%

road into an intersection that leads to Loop 1604. Whyte said another priority of the road projects is increasing pedestrian mobility and safety. “There’s a big emphasis on repairing old sidewalks and filling in the gaps, and thanks to the bond project, we’re able to really invest and prioritize our pedestrian mobility and safety in District 10,” Whyte said. To prioritize streets most in need of

reconstruction, city officials perform tests to determine a street’s pavement condition index and grade it from A to F. According to city documents, 43% of roadways have been graded as A, while 11% of roadways have failed city tests. According to city documents, the 2022-27 Bond program earmarks $100.5 million for reconstruc- tion of F-graded roadways.

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