Harlingen homeowner gets only half his street paved

HARLINGEN — When the city annexed his property 29 years ago, Manuel Diaz says officials promised to pave his street.

“They said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” Diaz said yesterday. “‘Just be patient.’ They just started sending me tax bills.”

Ever since, Diaz has paid about $500 per year in city taxes for the wood-frame home he built in 1980.

“We got absolutely nothing for it,” he said.

Then six months ago, city crews showed up to fix a storm sewer pipe that collapsed about halfway down Gomez Road.

After they fixed the pipe, crews rebuilt the stretch of road over the storm sewer, hand-paving it because the city doesn’t have a paving machine, City Engineer Javier Zamora said.

Then, Zamora said, officials decided to hand-pave the road portion up to Tucker Road after issues popped up along the storm sewer’s length.

When the work was done, one side of Gomez Road was hand-paved — and the other side remained in its original condition, Diaz said.

“It’s half of a street and the rest is all potholes,” Diaz said. “It looks bad. It’s ugly. It makes the neighborhood look bad.”

Along Gomez Road, the hand-paved side stands higher than the rest of the road.

“Since this is hand-laid as opposed to machine-laid, the riding surface is very uneven,” Zamora said.

Yesterday, City Manager Dan Serna said Gomez Road was added to a list of street paving projects.

Serna said the city will try to pave Gomez Road within about a year.

“We hope to have that area repaved in the very near future,” Serna said.

But Diaz wants it done sooner.

He also wants to know why the city plans to pave streets like Bothwell Road before Gomez Road.

While Gomez Road, about a fourth-mile long, has about 10 homes, Bothwell has two homes and a church, Diaz said.

In September, city commissioners took Zamora’s recommendation to pave Bothwell Road from Tucker to Dixieland Road at a cost of $128,262 as part of a $1.1 million street-paving program.

Serna said the city considers criteria such as surface conditions and the roads’ age when determining rank on the priority list.

The city plans to pave Bothwell Road this year because it requires frequent and costly maintenance, Serna said.

“We’ve been patching that road and patching and patching,” Serna said. “We’ve got to get it paved so we don’t have to send crews out there.”

Diaz said he’s still waiting for the city to pave his road.

“It’s been 29 years,” Diaz said. “They just want to complete the 30-year cycle before they do anything.”