Expect pothole repairs to take longer and fewer streets to be resurfaced in Colorado Springs this year.

Lower-than-projected Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority revenues are forcing the city to cut its capital, maintenance and transit budgets by about 16 percent.

As a result, pothole repair response times will go from three business days to five, critical bridgework will be delayed, and the city will only be able to resurface 54 lane miles instead of the 91 it had set out to do this year. The city has 7,000 lane miles.

“The RTA has been invaluable for us,” City Engineer Cam McNair said Tuesday.

“It’s a great program. It provides dedicated funding for street maintenance and capital projects and transit, so it’s really a great program,” he said. “I’m not complaining about it, but it sure hurts when the revenue drops off.”

Last month, the RTA predicted significant shortfalls in revenue raised by a 1 percent, voter-approved tax will continue through the year. The authority’s board asked member governments to come up with a plan to handle a projected $11.3 million decline in revenue collections.

Colorado Springs estimates its revenue from the tax will fall from $53.4 million to $44.6 million in 2009.

“It took a big drop versus the projections through the Christmas season and on into January and February,” McNair said.

The RTA had originally estimated that it would collect $70.8 million in 2009, up from $67.8 million in 2008. In 2007, the RTA collected $70.4 million.

About 75 percent of the sales tax revenue in the RTA is generated from Colorado Springs, McNair said.

“We’re the big generator of revenue, so we also end up taking the biggest cut because for the maintenance programs, the funds are proportioned out by population,” he said.

Among the other effects: the city is cutting back on the number of curbs, gutters and pedestrian ramps it had planned to install and abandoning plans to repair bridge decks on four Circle Drive bridges over Fountain Creek and Hancock Avenue.

“We’ve got some problem bridges we need to deal with, and this is going to set that back just a little bit,” McNair said.

Although most city streets are in “fair” condition, they won’t stay that way for long, he said.

“We’re moving in the wrong direction,” he said. “We’re deferring maintenance, and the city is getting bigger.”

McNair delivered the sobering news to the City Council on Monday.

“Combined with the city’s maintenance program being virtually eliminated, this is deferring a lot of maintenance on our street system, so this is an important and serious impact,” he said.

Capital improvement projects planned by the city largely will be unaffected – thanks mostly to $35 million the city recently received in federal economic stimulus funds to help expand Woodmen Road.

Removing Woodmen from the 2009 capital budget will free up $16.4 million for other capital projects, according to a memorandum about the budget cuts.

In addition, the city plans to use some of that money to offset most of the 2008 revenue deficit for the RTA entities: Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Manitou Springs and Green Mountain Falls. It also will use $5.6 million to offset the estimated 2009 revenue deficit for the city and the county, the memorandum states.

Jeremiah and Joseph Fey were each given the Hero Award by the Colorado Springs Fire Department Tuesday. The 5-year-old twins woke up their mother and sister when their kitchen caught fire on May 1. Photo by MARIA ST. LOUIS-SANCHEZ/THE GAZETTE