HUTTO — This time last year, Hutto had 64 projects on its capital improvement to-do list. Now, at the beginning of the city’s 2025 budget year, there are already 59.
While the city finished 20 projects, new ones are being added to the list almost as fast as they are being crossed off.
“Over the year we have dealt with 34 different consultants, which consists of 80 different consulting contracts, 14 contractors on 21 different construction contracts and 185 City Council items,” City Engineer Matt Rector told the council at its Thursday meeting. “We’ve averaged invoicing for consultants at $1.4 million a month and averaged monthly construction invoices at $3 million a month, all while doing plan reviews, service-extension requests, traffic impact analyses, drainage reports ... about 440 for the year.”
Rector said that while 20 completed projects may not sound like much, it was an improvement over previous years.
“We completed six park projects. I went all the way back to 2009, and most years of the city’s history we hadn’t even attempted six projects. Similar situations in streets, water and wastewater. The number of projects we completed this year, in most of those years rivaled how many the city even attempted,” he said.
Some of the completed projects include sidewalk construction in north Hutto, the FM 1660 at U.S. 79 turn lane, the water transmission line between Front Street and CR 132, testing of water pressure, adding lights to sports fields and hiking trails and expanding Cross Creek Trail.
“Anybody who knows anything about machinery, to get a giant machine moving takes a lot of energy and effort,” Rector said during the meeting. “Progress is slow at the start, but once you get it moving then it takes less energy.”
He added, “You’re going to see it very soon. You’ll see a bunch of master-service agreements coming to you, followed shortly by a bunch of individual project orders, so we can get rolling as soon as possible this year and see if we can match what we did last year.”
The speed — or seeming lack of it — in making capital improvements has long been a sore point for residents.
“Sometimes it’s hard for the citizens to really see how much we are getting done behind the scenes,” said Mayor Pro Tem Peter Gordon. “There is a lot of work that goes into actually turning dirt. So hopefully we can help our citizens really understand that there’s a lot of work being done.”
