SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
HARLINGEN — Fresh off a July vote approving 14.9 miles of new pavement across all five districts, the Harlingen City Commission opened this week’s meeting with the question on everyone’s mind: did anybody, at any point, call and ask what asphalt costs?
The answer, confirmed by a silence witnesses described as “professionally maintained,” is no. Bids landed at $82 a ton — ten dollars more than last year’s $72 — punching a $1.2 million hole in the $3.3 million street program and forcing the city to choose between paving fewer miles or pulling $600,000 from the $72 million general fund plus $600,000 left in the street maintenance fund, which officials stressed are two completely different couches.
“Somebody could have picked up the phone in July,” said Mayor Ida Cavazos, staring down the dais. “The asphalt people have a phone. It rings. I’ve seen it.”
City Engineer Ray Solis defended his original estimate as “conservative,” explaining it was conservative the way a man is conservative about checking his gas gauge on the drive to South Padre.
Commission Holds First-Ever Street Sacrifice
Under the mayor’s compromise, each of the five commissioners must walk to center chamber and drop the name of one street their district can live without into an overturned traffic cone. Early nominees include the shortcut everybody takes to avoid the Sunshine Strip, the one by the H-E-B that’s already basically fine, and a street whose entire job, residents agree, is being the other street.
“I’m not asking who dropped the ball,” said Commissioner Wally Munoz, who wanted to know why the commission was barely finding out now. “I’m asking whether the ball was ever in the budget.”
Commissioner Lupe Garcia framed it in starker terms: “We pave fewer roads, or we raise taxes to pay for roads we already voted to pave. There is no third option where the ton gets cheaper because we asked nicely.”
City Remains ‘So Proud’ Of Crew That Was The Savings
Through it all, the city continues to celebrate the in-house paving crew created two years ago specifically to save money on contractors. “The crew is the savings,” Cavazos said. “The asphalt is the cost. We budgeted very carefully for the savings.”
The crew reportedly stands ready to pave whatever the city can afford, a figure officials described as “being ball parked as we speak.” Officials in San Benito, who locked in their prices using something called a contract, declined to gloat, saying only that they read about Harlingen “in the paper, like everyone else.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is 14.9 miles a lot of paving?
A: For Harlingen, yes. It’s roughly the distance from your house to the place you keep telling people is “right there.”
Q: Can residents nominate a street for sacrifice?
A: No. The commission prefers to discover its own losses, the same way it discovered the price of asphalt.
