Finance Committee - 11/15/2018 Page 3
Stephen Dookran, City Engineer
Steve Dookran, City Engineer; the paving program this year has two parts to it. It has the piece that is paid for
with the large City bond and the next one is being paid for primarily with the Federal Highway Grant. The last
paving program is pretty much done for the year, we just finished Concord Street. In my opinion it went rather
well, we did a lot of work, a lot more work than we have been used to over several years in the past. | was
pleasantly surprised that we could get this much done this year. We've got | think like 25 miles done when we
typically would just get 5 miles in one year. Some hiccups, you know, there are always drainage problems
inherent in the program. The program is meant as a pavement management program not to solve drainage
problems. We try to solve the obvious ones, we don’t have the funds to fix all the drainage problems, but we
try to at least address those that we can with the limited funds that we have.
Some streets we didn’t get to because of utility issues, gas, water, sewer. We had to add some streets that
came up towards the end because of the condition of the last winter; the deterioration that was most significant
when we were putting the plan together. So we added those streets as well, so overall | think we had a pretty
successful year, despite the issues.
Under the Federal Program which the next item actually will talk about, we did the pavement on Somerset
Parkway and Amherst Street. We couldn't get to the top simply because it got too cold and the amount of work
that is needed to be done, so we are closing up those two streets. Some striping will be done next week and
Kinsley Street is next on the list for that program. We can’t get to Kinsley Street to do what we had planned,
but what we decided over the last two days is that the street department will do a shimming, a thin layer over
the worst part of Kinsley Street in two weeks. It was a small amount of money we will do that at least a good
ridable surface over the wintertime. It is not expected to last long, so next year we will come in and do the
proper paving that we had planned.
There is still some utility work to be done and that also caused the paving to be pushed out this late. We also
have an item; you will see sewer work for Kinsley Street. So that is essentially what we deal with when it
comes to paving, we always are chasing utilities, it is always worse than anticipated, but we deal with it.
Alderwoman Kelly
Were there any unexpected, especially on Kinsley that pushed you back more or is that typical to what you
would have seen?
Mr. Dookran
Well the item that | am talking about on Kinsley, there is a sewer which | will call another sewer that we found
that has to be dealt with. That work hasn’t been done yet and water came in towards the end, we’ve got to get
water in. Gas did their work, fortunately gas got their work in earlier, they are still doing some trenches across
the street to make connections and so on; in fact the gas company only came in this year, normally we know
ahead of time, a couple years ahead of time of the work. They said they had to get on Kinsley Street this year
so we had to let them go first and they spent a lot of time especially on the western end of the street near the
hospital.
We always anticipate problems with utilities but in this case on Kinsley the amount of work that they needed to
do was surprising, but we can’t say no because the last thing you want to do is pave the street and then have a
gas failure or something like that and then the street is all torn up again.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you.
MOTION CARRIED
