Special Bd. of Aldermen — 04/30/2018 Page 2
Alderman Tencza
Thank you. So could you explain to us a little more, is this a plan that is already in place in this $2.5 million, it
is just needed to extend the program? Is this new sewage pipes that are being replaced or have we already
planned on doing this, we just need to fund it now?
Mr. Dookran
Yes as it stands, we know of a number of miles of sewers that need addressing, right away, some of them
more critical than others. So we know what we need to do at least that in the next couple of years. So yes this
is the amount of funding that we are asking for to take on this project.
Alderman Tencza
So this will cover for the next couple of years the critical need for the sewage pipe that needs to be replaced?
Mr. Dookran
This funding that we are asking for is one year; next year will be another amount that we will be requesting.
Alderman Tencza
| don’t suppose there has been any consideration of how the paving plan fits into replacing these sewer pipes
or are the sewer pipes in need of replacing regardless of whether it is new pavement or old pavement.
Mr. Dookran
We do a lot of coordination with our paving program. We definitely do not want to pave a street and find out
that the sewers are failing or will fail within the next few years or even other utilities like water and natural gas.
So there is a lot of coordination. When we pick streets to be paved, based on paving condition, using the PCI,
the Paving Condition Index, we first want to look at the sewers. We eliminated, through the process of
elimination we remove those streets until we are able to qualify those sewers in those streets. And often if they
are inner city, you will find that those streets have to be put off.
Sometimes you have to take a chance, the life of pavement will last between 10 and say 20 years. Sewers will
last a lot longer as you know. So what we are doing, and especially with the increase in paving funds that we
have got recently, we are able to do a lot more streets in the inner city, so therefore we are finding out more
and more which of these streets have bad sewers. So | think in short the answer is there is a lot of
coordination between the paving program and the sewer program.
Alderman Tencza
If we didn’t replace the sewer pipe, what is the cost of repairing pipe once it breaks, versus replacing it before
there is an emergency?
Mr. Dookran
The cost is increased if you pave a street for instance and then a year later you have breakage there is an
increase in cost. You can have a paving program and you can repair the sewer at the same time, have the
utilities do their work, what you see happening on Kinsley Street, that’s the gas company that is doing the
work, we are going to follow that with some sewer work. When you do that altogether, you save on cost
because of just concentrating the work in one time frame. There are a lot of fixed costs associated with
