The city is set to embark on a summer street resurfacing plan that will cost $1.5 million, continuing an ambitious infrastructure wave of repairs that began in 2019.
With the work budgeted for 2025, ongoing city street repairs since 2019 will top $11 million — reaching dozens of locations. Over the first half of this year alone, more than 40 street repaving projects have been undertaken by the city, Con Edison, and Veolia.
The new incremental multi-year effort — guided by a 2019 consultant’s report highlighting the worst-rated city roads in need of repair — has reached Highland Avenue to Kirby Lane, Kirby Road North to Grace Church Street, and Barlow Street to Mead Place.
This summer’s plans were unveiled at a recent City Council meeting where 24 road repair projects were announced.
The ongoing efforts of the city’s Department of Public Works have been supplemented by those of Con Edison — required to resurface streets following replacement of aging gas lines on Loewen Court, Robert Crisfield Place, and Wappanocca Avenue — and the Veolia water company, which has replaced its own infrastructure pipes and conducted street repairs on Forest Avenue and Glen Oaks Street this year.
Of the $11 million spent on road resurfacing since 2019, about $5 million has been covered by grants from the state Department of Transportation. The city’s share of road resurfacing work this year will be funded entirely through state grants, according to city officials.
From 2019 through 2024, 136 locations across Rye have been resurfaced by the city, according to Interim City Manager Brian Shea. The work has comprised more than 47 “lane miles.”
City officials have made it a habit, in recent years, of making significant investments in road repairs.
In 2018, the City Council decided to prioritize roads, beginning an annual program of investing roughly $1.5 million toward repairs. That followed a period after the 2007 economic recession where the city — concerned about finances — curbed its spending.
The recently adopted multi-year approach has since replaced what had been an annual “seat-of-the pants annual estimate of needed investment,” Mayor Josh Cohn said. Instead of trying to do the “whole city at once,” Cohn explained that city staff has focused on a “worst first policy.”
The city’s work, “combined with the repavings completed by the utilities and Westchester County, has resulted in significantly improved road conditions citywide,” according to a 2025 report from the City Manager’s office
But the remaining potholes around town Cohn described as a Sisyphean task — just drive down Milton Avenue near Resurrection Church and Hill Street.
“It is a constant cycle of wear and tear,” he said. “Streets renewed seven years ago will have to be done again in coming years.”
The street repairs have only been one part of the infrastructure work being done.
Even more extensive — and expensive — has been the sewer line replacement undertaken as part of the city’s legal settlement with the non-profit group Save the Sound over violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act. All of the 11 communities named reached settlements agreeing to make repairs and upgrades to their infrastructure.
Poorly maintained sewer systems, which for decades caused millions of gallons of raw and partially treated sewage to enter the Long Island Sound, were at the center of the lawsuit.
Although “invisible to most,” the costly sewer repairs have been funded by a $10 million grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and matched by $8 million in local spending.
The city will also spend $500,000 just to monitor and maintain the upgraded system.
