Mayoral candidate Heath Mello says Omaha's infrastructure is crumbling, and he's the one with the experience who can secure funding to fix the city's streets.
During a Monday news conference, Mello called the current condition of the streets "an ongoing crisis." To make his case, he held a news conference at 78th Street and Hickory Circle.
Mello used Hickory Circle as an example because he says it's one of many poorly paved streets in Omaha. This neighborhood is labeled by Omaha Public Works as an unimproved street. Neighborhoods like this one have options for improvements, but they're very unpopular. One is to have the city grind them into gravel roads. The other: people would chip in to help the city get these streets up to code. Then, the city would foot the bill for future maintenance, but that can run into the thousands.
Instead of those options, Mello is proposing a private and partner concept that would take advantage of available funds and not add a burden to taxpayers. Mayor Jean Stothert is expected to address Mello's plan during a press availability at 2 p.m. Monday..
With all of the ads and news conferences we've seen, Mello launched this discussion after Stothert recently debuted a negative ad.
