Eleven miles of street resurfacing planned
Eleven miles of city-maintained streets are scheduled for resurfacing this year. Following the May 21 City Council meeting, a nearly $2 million contract was awarded to S.T. Wooten to mill and repave streets throughout the city during the 2026 calendar year.
The selection process is more than just a list; it’s a data-driven assessment for all city streets. Every three years, the city conducts a pavement condition survey to assess cracks, oxidation, and rideability. Each street receives a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) score from 0 to 100. A score of 0 indicates a road in poorest condition, while 100 is a brand-new street.
The score is only part of the story. To be as efficient as possible, the city balances these scores with traffic volume, the age of the road, and the condition of the utilities beneath the roadway. By coordinating between Engineering, Water Resources, and Streets, we ensure that any underground utility repairs are accounted for before the new pavement goes down—saving time and money.
Our goal is always to maximize the reach of our limited resurfacing funds. Resurfacing prices can vary widely in the marketplace due to many outside factors, so we are always ready to scale as needed to be as efficient as we can.
Wilson Energy's system redundancy reduces length of recent outage
Some Wilson Energy customers experienced a power outage on Tuesday morning. Thankfully that doesn’t happen too often in Wilson, so we wanted to explain a bit about what happened.
The outage was caused by an issue with a transmission line. The transmission system feeds Wilson Energy with power from generating sources, it’s like the energy highway into Wilson. This issue cut power to two substations that power more than 5,000 customers. Fixing transmission lines is rarely easy or quick, so this outage could have lasted many hours.
Fortunately, Wilson Energy has system redundancy, meaning that we have multiple pathways in place throughout the majority of the City’s grid. When Wilson Energy crews arrived on scene, they were able to reroute the affected substations to alternative sources of power while they worked on the transmission line.
While we understand that any power outage is an inconvenience, the interruption lasted a total of 94 minutes – with more than 70% of customers restored after an hour – not many hours, as could be expected.
A conventional radial system without redundancy would have affected twice as many customers for a much longer time. Redundancy also protects our line crews, who continued to work this afternoon to address the issue that caused the outage, by giving them the time and space to work safely, all while our customers’ power was restored.
System redundancy is one of the keys to high system reliability. Wilson Energy consistently has reliability measures much higher than the state and national averages. On average, Wilson Energy customers experience only 50.75 outage minutes per year, ranking among the top electric utilities in the country.
We know Wilson has the best line crews, bar none. We also want to recognize the engineers who built our system and the city leaders who have consistently made investments in a safe, reliable electric system.
|
Community Parks projects continue across Wilson
Progress continues on the City of Wilson's Community Parks Project, an initiative focused on improving neighborhood parks across the city through new amenities, accessibility upgrades, and enhanced recreational opportunities.
After several months of planning and community engagement, construction began in mid-2025 at multiple sites throughout Wilson. Residents may have already noticed one of the most visible improvements: new playground equipment has been installed at most project locations.
The next phase of work will include walking paths, landscaping, parking improvements, signage, and additional ADA accessibility enhancements. Several parks will also receive picnic shelters, picnic tables, and other amenities identified through community feedback.
The project includes improvements at Carolina Street Park, Five Points Park, Freeman Park, Lamm Park, Lane Park, Barnes Street Community Center Park, Reid Street Community Center, Vera Pope Resource Center Park, Warren Street Park, Washington Carver Heights Park, Weaver-Bailey Park, and the Wedgewood Park area.
Want to see what's happening at a specific park? Visit the Community Parks Project page on the city website, where you can explore an interactive map showing the location, status, and planned improvements for each park.
As work continues, these investments will help create more welcoming, accessible, and enjoyable neighborhood parks for residents across Wilson.
|
City pauses any plans for new data centers
Wilson officials recently voted to block data centers from the city until their impacts are better understood.
The Wilson City Council approved a year-long moratorium on data center construction in May. That gives officials until May 2027 to weigh how a center might impact nearby homes, the electric grid, water usage and other concerns.
Data centers are physical buildings that house networked computers and servers. There is a rush to build them across the United States to power artificial intelligence (AI) applications online. North Carolina has 40 major data centers with additional ones planned in Richmond County and Person County.
Large data centers can require as much energy as a small city and they also typically use a lot of water for cooling. Some have had complaints about noise.
|
|
