Streets top priority for Mayor Kabat if city reduces reserve funds

Council to vote on reducing reserve funds, which could add another $5 million in spending. 

There is already some jockeying for a windfall of cash expected through a change coming in La Crosse’s city hall this week.

The city council will look to change rules to allow keeping less money in reserves, which means another $5 million possibly to spend on projects. And, that could mean streets, although La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat says there’s a limit to how much the city can spend on streets all at once.

“Even if we had $10 million and we said, ‘Here’s all of this money, let’s do our streets,’ our internal staffing would not be able to do any more – or maybe increase it by a little bit,” Kabat said.

Kabat did say his top priority is to get the streets up to par.

“I do think that we should be looking at a couple of the streets – whether it’s Losey Blvd., La Crosse St. or Cass St.,” he said. “Some of these are just in very, very bad shape. To use a portion of that, windfall, if that’s what you want to call it.”

Kabat says fixing up the city’s old fire stations and building a new one on the south side are also among his top priorities for using the extra money.

“Streets, and then, when it comes down to it, the fire stations,” he said. “We have certain facilities, the newest fire station was built in 1965.”