Special Board of Aldermen 10-14-2021 Page 10
Alderman Jette
So will this have to be repeated? Are we going to be spending this kind of money after we finish this 10-year program
will we be starting another 10-year program and revisiting all the streets again?
Dan Hudson, City Engineer
It's a fair question. | don't think that's the plan. This program was projected to kind of like | said earlier, play a little bit of
catch up because we had full fallen behind. Once we do that, then we'll be in a state (inaudible) into a maintenance
mode. The city will always need to be paving. Every year you should be paving so you're trying to keep up because the
roads are degrading every year. It's like, you know, paint on your house is degrading every year. It needs to periodically
be repainted and the same is true for roadway. No matter how much preservation and maintenance we do, there will
always be roads that need paving.
The goal here is to through this significant effort the city's making, like | said, like catch up get the majority of roads in
good condition and then we'll be able to do more maintenance which is less costly. So in the long run, this will be
financially beneficial to the city. The city will save money over time by having done this and then do more maintenance,
preservation efforts in the future but there will always be paving.
Alderman Jette
But the degree of reconstruction won't be necessary to do as much in the future?
Dan Hudson, City Engineer
Yes, that is the intent. You bring the roads up in a good condition; you keep them there, but there will be roads that need
repaving so you do that, but you're doing less of it. You're not paving as many roads at atime. So you're, you know, the
cost of your annual paving effort can be reduced.
Alderman Jette
Thank you.
Alderman Klee
Thank you again, Madam President. Couple of questions, a couple of comments. First off, I'd like to say thank you for
the letters that you do send out with the explanations and so on. I've gotten a number of people that have called me and
said, do we know when they're going to be doing it because | want to get my road paved? | had one constituent who
actually wanted to bring gas line into their home, which meant going into the street and so on. So they made sure that
they get that done timely. So it was it was very helpful and they didn't get... We also had one that was on Concord Street
that was a build after it had been a year or so ago when it when it got paved and we were able to figure out a way of
them doing it from a side street rather than coming in from Concord. So it does help to have that information, even if it's
after the fact.
The other comment that | wanted to make was in the case of flooding. | Know you said that you can't always fix it and |
know we have a lot of homes that are below grade. Their driveways are below grade and we've had that. When you did
your paving, you built berms by their driveways to stop that from going through and | had one — not the same street - on
Birchwood that had flooding that was in front of their home. So whenever anybody walked it, it iced up and so on. It was
last year and this year you brought someone in to fix it. So, again, it was Sunshine Paving. Fingers crossed that it did
work this time but | do appreciate that even though it took a while to do it, | do appreciate that. So | just wanted to kind of
give you the kudos for that. It takes a while, people get frustrated but we do see that the work is happening. So thank
you.
Dan Hudson, City Engineer
Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
Yeah, those of us that have been around a little while realize that the reason we get into the position of having to spend
so much for paving was because in an effort to save money, previous administrations didn't pave enough streets every
