Finance Committee - 03/04/2020 Page 10
Mr. Hudson
So | don’t know if | can fully answer that | am fairly new. But yeah, you know, we are | think coming into year
four of a five year bonding program. To the City’s credit they've been very thoughtful in playing some catchup
maybe, but putting a substantial effort into paving. You know we do the best we can to get the contracts out
and get them built and so that’s what we try to do. | think last year’s program went fairly well from what |
understand. It is obviously a disruptive thing where we are paving all over the City, people trying to get from
point A to point B but | think the program has been very successful to date, at least from what | see coming in
and we are just going to continue that.
Alderwoman Kelly
Can | follow up? Do you know and maybe you don’t because you’re new? Do you know how many miles we
plan to pave and how many we actually completed last year?
Mr. Hudson
| apologize, | don’t have that in front of me. | know in the budget report we do each year, we report how much
we’ve done. | think we were pretty much on target last year of what we expected to do.
Mayor Donchess
It was about 30 miles, maybe we were a little short because of the weather at the end.
Alderwoman Kelly
Alright, thank you.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you. Welcome, first time here, I’d like to give you your chance at your first public service
announcement. And that is can you discuss the five year moratorium that we do have when we pave and do
we put the list out. | wish the homeowners would look and if they want to upgrade at that particular time to
natural gas or to fix their water systems or perhaps re-tie in the sewer system. Can you explain the five year
moratorium of elected type of situations? Now emergencies are one thing but can you just explain the
moratorium? That way we keep our streets looking the best, for at least five years if we can.
Mr. Hudson
Yeah for sure, so we are spending a lot of money here and our goal is to preserve that investment so there is a
five year moratorium for newly paved roads except in the case of emergency or hardship. We wouldn't permit
somebody to cut into that pavement, should that be necessary, like unfortunately we recently had on Kinsley
Street that was just paved. A resident’s sewer service collapsed so we went before the Public Works Board
and had to request approval to cut into the street. That’s unfortunate, nobody likes that, but it happens. But
when that happens we need to do a restoration where there’s a cut back or paving of that area but then we go
further and we mill 20 feet beyond either side of the cut and then repave that.
So at least this top surface is all sealed back in. | wish we could avoid that, | know some people joke that the
surest way to have something break it to paint it black, pave it, right? It happens, we do send out public notices
and | agree we do wish that people would you know look at those and try to do everything that they can to
upgrade their services. Because it is very costly to do that repair method and if it is the owner's service then
it's on their dime that work needs to be done. So if you have a service that is in questionable condition, you
know, many years old, it would behoove you to try to do that ahead of our paving.
