Next phase of Losey Boulevard repairs competes for funding with many other improvement projects

Plenty of fine tuning is needed on a big spending plan for La Crosse for 2019.

There are all sorts of road projects planned for the city, with $77 million on an infrastructure wishlist. The city will wind up spending a fraction of that for things like roads and parks.

When you go through a list of needed street repairs in La Crosse, the dollars start to add up. The city will have to whittle down a list with tens of millions of dollars in street repairs wanted for next year to get to something that fits into a self-imposed $7.5 million borrowing limit.

City council member Paul Medinger is hoping the heavily traveled Losey Boulevard, through his district, makes the cut. Medinger wants Losey in his district south of State Road to look like the section that was just completed, a little north of there.

“People are having the same problems all the way down Losey,” Medinger said. “It’s not just this section. That was 2018’s project.”

So far, $2.785 million has been earmarked for Losey repairs — a resurfacing from State Road to just north of Ward AVenue — but that has to compete with many other street projects, including a locally funded repair for La Crosse Street, which could be $10 million on its own.

“It’s my hope, and I’m gonna do what I can, to see if we can get the rest of Losey done here in the coming years,” Medinger said. “The issues that people have been having all the way up and down Losey, that something needs to be done and hopefully we can keep working on chunks of the road until we get it where we need it.”

Also vying for money in the same budget next year: $2.5 million for new indoor and outdoor tennis courts at Forest Hills and $10 million for two new fire stations.