Lincoln streets and alleys end-of-fiscal-year report

From report by Tracy Jackson, superintendent

[May 23, 2008]  As the current fiscal year came to a close, the street department is once again geared up for the new fiscal year projects.

In this past year the street department did a variety of different jobs. We cleaned numerous ditches that haven't been done in years to correct drainage issues, installed culverts for new buildings and replaced culverts that have deteriorated also.

We swept streets and continued sweeping the downtown on Thursday nights and Friday mornings when possible.

The department also mowed rights of way and parks.

Once again this past year, the department continued replacing sidewalks throughout the city and continues to try to finish the current list of approved sidewalks. Some walks have been replaced to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I am still meeting with some of the different organizations on compiling a better plan for adding more ramps for the disabled, other than those requested through the city council or those that need to be repaired.

Curbs have been replaced in different areas of the city, and in some cases they have been added to help alleviate drainage problems.

We have planted 30 3- to 4-inch caliper trees throughout the city to replace trees removed after the storms. We have planted over 200 saplings either at our tree farm or at the landfill, down in the bottom.

There were 13,741 people who signed in to use the landfill in 2006-07, and in 2007-08 there were 19,382 people who used the landfill.

Last spring and summer we continued our yearly mosquito program by checking for larvae in areas that hold water and hatching our test plot to determine mosquito numbers and sex. We have already started this year's surveillance for mosquitoes. As always, we did spray for flies during and after the fair.

We sprayed herbicide on rights of way, drainage ditches and downtown for weeds. We also used aquatic herbicide for areas out west of town and around Brainard's Branch due to those waterways dumping directly where fish and wildlife live.

The department worked with all of the other departments on different tasks from providing barricades and directing traffic to picking up bicycles and looking at possible code violations and provided 126 hours of maintenance on squad cars for the police department.

The department worked almost daily with the city engineer on everything from street issues and alleys to drainage, curbs and sign issues. The city engineer and I also meet to discuss different projects that have happened or will possibly be happening in the near future.

We help with all of the festivals from Heritage Days to the Crippled Children's Fundraiser and also provide the ticket booths and snow fence to businesses, churches and schools for their different events.

We did our normal maintenance on streets by patching, sweeping and seal coating. The seal coat program included putting an A-3 coating on the streets where we used the Asphalt Zipper, including mixing Portland cement into the street. This worked so well on one of the streets that we did, the homeowners now want a speed limit sign on it.

The department did its annual leaf pickup again this year.

We plowed snow, salted streets and removed snow from the downtown. We did manage to keep major streets open for emergency vehicles, and again we helped the Illinois Department of Transportation with Route 66 and Woodlawn Road due to the number of crashes they were attending to. Due to the number of hours we used the snowplow equipment this year, we spent a lot of time on vehicle maintenance. Overall, I feel the men did an outstanding job despite what some people may have said.

These are just the main tasks that the department does during the year. We also do, but are not limited to, maintenance of traffic lights, picking up dead animals such as deer to squirrels, fixing banners and flagpoles downtown, etc.

The department had at least one employee on light duty every day for the last six months of the year due to injuries. New hire Chris Whiteman replaced Jim Hinton when Hinton relocated out of state. Whiteman made it through his probation period with no problems and is a great asset to the department.

Tracy A. Jackson
Street department

[Text from report by Tracy Jackson]