Sean C. Morgan
The surface of 32nd Court and Juniper Street between 32nd Court and 35th Avenue, behind Hawthorne School, is rough, to say the least – a mix of cracked pavement, potholes, oil and gravel.
Sweet Home Public Works is planning to do something about that and other streets later this year as it moves through a list of needed repairs and improvements.
The list hasn’t been officially adopted or published, said Public Works Director Greg Springman. It’s just a draft, but at the top of the list are two projects budgeted for this year.
Plans for overlays on 18th Avenue and Ames Creek Drive and for 45th, 46th and 47th avenues around Kalmia, south of Long Street, are on hold as the city seeks a new consultant to serve as city engineer, needed to create bid documents, Springman said. Those two projects are budgeted in the 2018-19 fiscal year, which ends June 30.
In the next fiscal year, 2019-20, which begins July 1, the fix-it list includes 32nd Court and Juniper Street, 45th Avenue south of Airport Road, 46th Avenue south of Airport Road and 29th Avenue from Long Street to Foothills Drive.
“A good transportation network for any city requires roads that citizens can drive on safely and can get from point A to point B with minimal hassle and all the tires still on the vehicle instead of in some pothole,” the draft plan states.
Springman worked with all operational and engineering staff to develop the five-year capital improvement plan across all divisions of Public Works, including water, wastewater, parks and streets.
Each improvement is tentatively scheduled throughout a five-year period. Springman said the document is “fluid” and not final.
“The idea is we’ll take blocks of projects we think we can fund,” he said, and start “getting projects done. From year to year, this can change. We can move things around based on funding.”
In the long run, he said, projects like Juniper, 45th and 46th will save the city money.
“To me it makes sense looking at roads that are more expensive to maintain,” Springman said. If the city invests in them, it doesn’t need to keep going back and spending money maintaining these roads.
“We strive to provide timely, cost-effective, preventive maintenance of public infrastructure and equipment and assist other departments and divisions to jointly provide a safe convenient and healthy environment for the City of Sweet Home,” says the draft plan.
“We need to start fixing some of these roads with whatever money we have,” Springman said. “We can’t just keep spending money working on them.”
To help create the plan, he said, “I asked my guys, where are you spending most of your time?”
Most of the resources for the projects comes from the state in the form of Gas Tax revenue.
In 2019-20, 29th Avenue will receive a thin lift overlay for preventive maintenance. That project will cost an estimated $150,000. Funding will be split evenly between the Streets Enterprise Fund and the Path Program Fund.
Juniper, 32nd, 45th and 46th streets are in poor condition and will be paved at an estimated cost of $130,000, which will be taken from the city’s Streets Fund.
The project does not include curbs, sidewalks and drainage. Springman said the roads are oil, gravel, pavement and “whatever else has been done to them” over the years.
“Let’s just at least get them paved,” he said. “The idea is that we start taking a little stab, get them to a spot where they’re OK.”
Winter storms are harder on these kinds of surfaces, requiring more attention, Springman said, something that was visible in the Public Works gravel yard after the recent snow storm, as an example.
An additional project in next fiscal year’s budget are the purchase and installation of radar speed message signs to inform drivers of their current speed and posted speed. That cost, estimated at $40,000, will be paid from the Streets Fund.
An extension of sidewalks from 54th Avenue to Riggs Hill Road also is scheduled for 2019-20 using grant and local funds.
Going forward, Public Works can use 311 Citizen Portal information to help track problem areas, Springman said. The portal may be reached through the city’s website, where citizens can report problems they’re aware of.
The time and money Public Works isn’t spending on these streets, Springman said, can be spent on other things.
After the next fiscal year, other tentatively planned projects include a thin lift overlay on the Strawberry Subdivisions, Nandina Street, Strawberry Loop Road and Strawberry Ridge Drive; an overlay for 8th Avenue from Cedar Street to Oak Terrace; a half-street improvement on the south side of Harding Street, including sidewalks, curbs, gutters, catch basins and a full street overlay; and storm catch basins on 42nd Avenue.
Another tentative project will pave gravel streets, including Juniper Street off 6th Avenue; Poplar Street off 9th Avenue, 13th Avenue and Osage Street; Locust Street at 54th Avenue; Nandina, Osage, Poplar and 52nd Avenue; and Nandina Street between 54th and 56th.