Transportation User Fee (TUF)

About

The Borger City Council held a strategic vision session in 2018 which lead to the development of a new Mission and Vision for the City of Borger along with several Strategic Pillars to guide the City of Borger’s development.  Based on community feedback, street improvements received high priority in the Council’s discussions.

The City of Borger has been able to budget $150,000 to $300,000 per year for roadway maintenance with an entire Street & Alley Maintenance budget ranging between $750,000 to $1,200,000 per year depending on the amount authorized for seal coating programs.  The need to maintain a fair, equitable and consistent funding stream became clear and after discussion, Pillar #5 – Infrastructure, included a milestone of creating a Transportation User Fee (TUF) and a possible bond election for street projects to improve street conditions.

Increasing revenue was only one part of the problem. Before the City increased spending on the transportation system, Council wanted data to help support and prioritize which roadways were selected for repairs and what repair method was used. In additional to begging traffic counts for each block in the City, a street assessment on a representative section of roadways was completed to ensure that future decisions could be based on actual condition and cost estimates.  This information further supported the need for a TUF to increase maintenance and improvement of Borger’s transportation infrastructure.

Transportation User Fees (TUFs) are applied to the utility bill of customers located within the City Limits.  TUF’s use a trip generation factor to classify customers into a rate category.   Residential and low volume businesses generally receive a fixed flat rate category while other businesses and commercial operations receive a category based on their trip generation rate. Considering that a single-family residence normally only has one or two cars while a large box store parking lot attracts 100’s of cars per hour, a fee based on use produces a more equitable method of paying for the system.  Since the box stores receives a greater benefit from the transportation system and causes more demand and wear and tear on the transportation system, they should pay a higher amount for improvement and maintenance.

Click Here to see a list of projects for FY 2020 - 2021