Monterey has so much cash for road repairs it has to bulk up city staff to manage them.

Monterey is facing a challenge that any city would envy: It has so much money for road projects in the coming years that it doesn’t have enough staff to manage them – yet.

“It’s a good problem to have,” says Steve Wittry, the city’s public works director, who’s also currently acting as an engineer for the city until more engineers can be hired.

The windfall of funding is coming from various pots, nearly all of which are voter-approved tax measures, and according to City Manager Hans Uslar, amounts to about $14-$16 million annually over the next eight years.

Foremost among them is Measure S, an eight-year, one-cent sales tax that voters approved in November with 82 percent of the vote to help repair and rebuild the city’s streets and storm drains. It was the highest margin of approval for any special sales tax initiative in the state in the Nov. 6 election.

Measure S is a continuation of Measure P, a four-year, one-cent sales tax voters approved in 2014, but the city will be approaching the windfall differently. Uslar says Measure P mostly enabled the city to resurface streets, but Measure S funds will mostly go to reconstruct streets. That will require bringing on more engineers and perhaps administrative staff to get the projects done in a timely manner.

“We need to honor that vote,” Uslar says.

Uslar plans to present the city’s infrastructure goals to City Council in late February or early March, and one open question will be how to address the possibility of undergrounding utilities, an idea that has gained momentum in recent months in the wake of the Camp Fire, which was sparked by felled power lines.

In order to fund undergrounding, property owners would have to form an assessment district and pay for it themselves, but the city wants to facilitate the process as much as possible for the neighborhoods that express interest. Mainly, that means putting a conduit on the shoulder of the street, Wittry says, but the logistics of where to place them is rife with complexity.

Wittry says the city is currently working on its implementation plan for its various projects so that they can coincide with things like planned repair work carried out by California American Water on its water system, and he expects the plan to be done by June.