Odessa still was riding on the coattails of a boom in 2008 thanks to once-skyrocketing oil prices, but it was the worst of times for anyone looking for an affordable home.

Mayor Larry Melton said the city continues to work on improving that housing situation.

Melton praised the city's efforts to feed Odessa's starving housing market in 2008 - particularly workforce housing in the $70,000 to $170,000 range. City leaders have struggled with finding developers and contractors to work on homes in this price range because Odessa's market has been so strong, which draws builders to more expensive projects, leaving lower-income buyers without many options.

Various city and nonprofit leaders have lamented the negative impact this housing gap has on local employers who struggle to find laborers and on the number of Odessa's working homeless.

The city's community development department tweaked one of its programs and created another in 2008 in an attempt to fix the problem.

Odessa is using its new Infill Housing Program to build three new affordable homes off Bluebird Street that should sell for about $85,000. Assistant City Manager Michael Marrero said this is the first time the city itself is building affordable homes - through its partnership with Burnett Construction - instead of partnering with a nonprofit to do it.

The whole idea is to get more affordable homes on the market faster.

Community development's workforce housing incentive program, implemented in 2007, has helped bring 40 lower-priced homes to the city so far and brought 95 other homes on contract now.

City Council members agreed to pay Dallas-based Green Eagles Development $250,000 up front in October as an incentive for building 53 new affordable homes on the city's south side. Those homes are expected to sell for between $85,000 and $125,000 and will be constructed with a green approach.

The payment up front was a variation on the workforce housing incentive program, which typically pays developers anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000 after a house sells as a way to reward them for building in a less-profitable market.

Marrero said all of the Bluebird Street homes have been spoken for, and developers have 15 contracts signed for homes in community development's south-side addition.

"We'd gotten behind in our housing market, and we were able to get a lot of houses built this year, particularly in the workforce housing range," Melton said.

The mayor said the city may soon begin to experience a slowdown in the strong sales tax revenue Odessa saw in 2008.

He said he plans to manage the city conservatively during the next few months to gauge potential fallout. December's $2 million dollar check marked the 14th time that sales tax totals have been more than $2 million in history and the seventh time this year that revenues have exceeded $2 million.

In 2008, the city brought in $24,951,525.76, about $2.78 million more than in calendar year 2007. The city fiscal year runs October through September.

Melton said slowing sales tax revenues probably will force City Council members to hold back on spending money for the parks master plan, which includes improvements to Sherwood and McKinney parks.

"I think we're going to kind of pull our horns in and look at what has to be done and what can be postponed for a while," he said.

In other news, the City Council gave starting police officers a 13.64 percent raise in March to help combat employee shortages and get Odessa on par with similar-sized cities for police pay. OPD corporals got a 6 percent raise and sergeants got 3 percent.

All other city employees received a 2 percent raise in April, which was bumped up by an additional 5 percent in October.

>> Annexation: City Council members approved Odessa's largest land annexation in 29 years in July. The 717-acre plot of vacant land north and northwest of Ratliff Stadium is planned for mixed-use development, including apartments, single-family homes, offices and a possible hotel.

>> Infrastructure: The city has started a five-year, $69 million endeavor to improve aging water and sewer infrastructure. It is part of the city's Water and Sewer System Improvement Programming Project, or WSSIP for short. City Council members awarded a $1.69 million bid to Key Enterprises last month for the first step.

>> Municipal golf course: Ratliff Ranch Golf Links opened in August after being closed for two years and more than $4.2 million worth of renovations. Assistant City Manager James Zentner said so far Ratliff has generated a monthly revenue of about $121,000 from rentals and fees, about $40,000 more than what City Council members expected.

>> ETJ: City leaders reached an agreement with the city of Midland to extend Odessa's extraterritorial jurisdiction by 23 square miles to the east. City Manager Richard Morton said this will give Odessa more room for future expansion.