Mayor Hull talks road improvements in Rio Rancho

When Gregg Hull took office as Rio Rancho mayor in 2014, his office barely had enough money to retain first responders. There definitely wasn’t money for road improvements.

Recently, Hull showcased all the work that has been done and is continuing to be done to fix roads in the City of Vision.

“The first two years that I was in office, we were operating on the slimmest of budgets,” Hull said. “We were fighting to retain some of our employees, like our police and our fire. And we had to prioritize public safety with the money that we had, which was the right thing to do.”

In 2016, the city put $9 million in general obligation bonds on the ballot, to be repaid from property taxes, for the purpose of designing, constructing, repairing, preserving, rehabilitating, enhancing and otherwise improving roads.

“We asked the voters if they would support the GO Bond, and they came out, supported it very handily — like 63% were in favor,” Hull said. “Then when they saw that these guys are actually going to do the work, that approval rating went up to 78%, and it’s been in the high 70s ever since.”

Since 2016, 38 major road projects have been completed with a cost of over $108 million, allowing more than 110 miles of residential streets to be improved, he said.

“What we want to look at is how do we approach fixing over 465 miles of paved roads?” Hull said. “There’s the old saying, how do you eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time. And what we have here is an elephant. And before I took office, we had 20 years of neglect on the streets with little to no maintenance. And so what we’ve done is we’ve found a way to build it, pave out these roads. And quite frankly, we’ve done it on a shoestring budget.”

2024 promises even more projects to make the roads better.

Among the ongoing projects in Rio Rancho right now are:

• Northern Blvd. reconstruction between Rockaway Blvd. and NM528 to include a new water line, full reconstruction of the asphalt pedestrian path on the south side of Northern Blvd. and new A.D.A.-compliant ramps throughout the project, which costs $ 7,495,749.16 and is expected to be finished in October.
• Enchanted Hills reconstruction from Chayote Road to NM528 to include a new water line and sanitary sewer line from Chayote Road to Augusta Hills Road, a full reconstruction of the asphalt pedestrian path on the north side of Enchanted Hills and new A.D.A.-compliant ramps throughout the project, which costs $ 8,942,658.72 and is expected to be completed in August.
• Quantum Road reconstruction between Northern Blvd. and NM528 to include a new waterline. In addition, full-depth reconstruction, to include new waterlines on Laser and Vortex roads, are included. This project costs $3,786,569.43 and is scheduled to wrap up in June.

There are eight ongoing projects, not including reconstruction projects on King Blvd. and Spring Road that recently finished. There are several projects in the planning stages and several ongoing hybrid mill and inlay paving projects that will replace the existing asphalt with new pavement and create an improved road base.

Spring Road underwent significant decay and was in need of repair. Spring Road serves as a collector, gathering traffic from neighborhood streets and directing it to main arterials. The project included not only resurfacing the road but also replacing the water line underneath, improving the road surface and the underlying infrastructure.

King Road, leading to the Northern Meadows community, was transformed with new sidewalks, drainage systems, walking paths, bike lanes and streetlights. Hull highlighted the city’s strategic approach to road improvements, focusing on key projects and leveraging funds to maximize impact.

“We’ve never had this many projects going at once. We’ve never had that in the city’s history, had this many projects at once because the city has never had the money that we have now,” Hull said. “The money that we have, we’ve grown organically. For example, we haven’t used any of the money yet, but one place we’re expecting to grow some new revenue is from the Permanent Fund. I would love to see the money that that’s generated from that go into maintenance on the roads that we’ve just recently replaced.”

The City General Fund has been used to fund 16% of the projects with GO Bonds accounting for 37.5%.

“In 2014 when I took office, we didn’t have two nickels to rub together, let alone put that kind of cash from our general fund into fixing roads, and not just patching roads, but actually repaving some roads,” Hull said.

Another GO Bond for $10.6 million to be used for roads is on the ballot for the March 5 election. If approved, it would be used for reconstruction of Lema Road, 19th Avenue and Safelite Blvd.

“We have never, ever paused on working on roads since I took office,” Hull said. “We’ve been fixing a road in one place or another, and so and we’re committed to continuing to get these roads fixed as quickly as we can.”