FAIRBURY – Every year nearly every city in Nebraska identifies the streets and roads it plans to improve or fix, either in the near future or the long term. This week, the city of Fairbury followed suit, unveiling its 1- and 6-year Street Improvement Plan for 2025-2030. 

The city presented this plan to the council on Tuesday night, in keeping with a similar report produced every year by the state of Nebraska itself, which combines the individual plans from every city and municipality into one collective report that helps to produce an overall status report on the state of the roads across the state. 

To try to assess the overall quality of the local roads, streets and sidewalks, the city of Fairbury sponsored a survey designed to solicit public feedback to help prioritize the most needed repair jobs. More response would have been more instructive, the city said, but most of the areas the survey suggested the city target were already on the shortlist for 2025, or were given increased merit because of the survey. 

“The survey obviously gave us some insight as to how to make sure we were addressing the community’s needs, or at least acknowledging them and making an effort to address them,” said Laura Bedlan, Fairbury’s development services director. “If we don’t get all the projects [in the 1-year plan] done this year – and we won’t - then they will push to the following year. There will be a little bit of change – some streets will move up and some will move back.” 

In total, there are six projects that have been shortlisted for 2025 as part of the 1-year phase of the plan. Most of those projects are located in Fairbury’s Industrial Park east of K Street, which would be funded by carryover dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act. Also on the list for this year is part of 20th Street, to be paid for by public works funding, and two stretches of brick streets in Fairbury’s downtown district, which would be supported by half-cent sales tax dollars. 

That makes six streets on the 1-year plan and another 10 streets in total on the 6-year plan. And an additional eight streets could get moved onto the 1-year plan, but only if there’s enough funding available to tackle everything. it’s less likely they’d be done, 

“Keep in mind that the 1 and 6 report is just that – it’s a report to the state on what we would like to get done if we had unlimited funding. And we do not have unlimited funding, so obviously the roads that will be worked on this year will be the ones we are able to fund,” Bedlan said. “We have different buckets of funding that we draw from to do different types of road. And then unfortunately some of the roads we have listed on there undoubtedly we will not get funding for and they’ll be just moved to the following year. We want to do the best we can with the dollars that we have, and we’re trying to touch base with the general public as well as to what their needs are.” 

The proposal of this plan to the council and to the public – regardless of how many people participated in Tuesday’s public hearing – is step one of the annual procedure. Updates on some of the six identified parts of the 1-year plan can be expected as the year progresses.