Lincoln Aldermen balk on fall road project plan
Paver program questioned

[October 04, 2017] 

LINCOLN

On Monday evening, Lincoln aldermen were asked to approve a bid from United Contractors Midwest for resurfacing projects within the city. The vote was to approve an amount not to exceed $500,000.

At last week’s Tuesday night Committee of the Whole, Street Superintendent Walt Landers had told the council that the bid for the original resurfacing plan had come in well under budget. The city had set aside the $500,000, and the bid was for approximately $330,000. Landers said that he wanted to add more streets to the project in order to spend the fully budgeted amount.

On Monday evening the motion to approve the full amount was made by Jeff Hoinacki and seconded by Kathy Horn. When Mayor Seth Goodman opened the floor for discussion, what resulted was a lengthy talk about not only the road plan, but also why the Pacer program was not used to determine the list of roads to be repaired.

In February the city had approved the purchase of a special software program called Paver - Pavement Management Assessment and Modeling System - that would involve evaluating and grading every street in the city. Based on the grades, the city would then be able to implement a maintenance program to keep relatively good streets in good condition, and identify the very worst streets in town, and help the city develop a capital improvement plan for those streets.

Within the Paver program, numbers are assigned to each street, block by block that relate to the condition of the street, based on a number of factors.

The proposal from Farnsworth had outlined that the program would help the city understand the good and the bad streets in town. With the grading system, the city would choose how they proceeded. It had been recommended that roads with mid- to low priority grades be included in a maintenance plan that would keep those roads in fair to good shape continually. Streets that were in poor condition, could be added as capital improvement projects as the city was able to afford. Once a bad road was brought up to a higher quality, then that road would be part of a maintenance program to keep it from becoming a problem area in the future.

During the discussions, Steve Parrott was the first to pose a question for Landers. He said he had received comments about the streets that were on the list for resurfacing. It looked like there were streets around the Lincoln Depot that had been purposely targeted. He wonder if that was the case, or was it just a coincidence that those streets had made the list.

Landers said that the streets around the Depot were targeted purposefully because, the idea was to make that part of the town look good with good streets, to go along with the completion of the Depot renovation. Parrot said that was where he had a problem. He said there were streets in the city in much worse condition than those in the vicinity of the depot.

Parrott then asked why the city had not utilized the Paver program to establish the work list. Landers said that the Paver program had been purchased after a voting delay from the council. After the “boots on the ground” work to collect measurable data, there was not time for everything to be calculated and recorded before the city had to designate this year’s projects.

Parrott then asked if city staff had gone through the Paver training that had been part of the agreement with Farnsworth Group when the city purchased the program. Landers said that two staff had done the training in April. Parrott asked why, if the plan wasn’t to be used this year, did the staff do the training. Landers said the training was done during the boots on the ground evaluations.

Rick Hoefle noted that when the city purchased the program from Farnsworth Group, there had been an understanding that the Paver would be used this year. He went on to say that he felt the approval to purchase had been “ram-rodded through, to no benefit.”

Hoefle would later note that the training for the program with city staff had been done on April 27th. He felt that based on that time frame, the Paver should have been completed in time to be utilized this year, as was promised by Farnsworth.

Landers said that while the physical work was done promptly, it takes a lot of time to enter data into the computer and establish the grading system for the streets.

Tracy Welch brought the discussion back to the current situation asking if the streets around the Depot had intentionally be designated before the Pacer was fully in place, could the city now go back, use the Pacer evaluation, and reassess the roads it would do this fall.

Landers answered with a decisive “no” saying it was too late in the year to start over. He told the aldermen that if they start over now, there was almost no possibility that there would be any street work done at all this year.

The aldermen then talked about the excess dollars that were to be included in the approval; where the $168,000 could be used. Hoefle suggested doing more of Tremont Street, and Parrott noted that Park Place is one of the worst passages in town. Welch noted that with the closing of Pekin Street at the railroad tracks, Tremont is taking on more traffic, and it is indeed in bad shape. Hoefle suggested then that Landers get pricing to do more of Tremont (two blocks from Chicago to Logan Streets were in the first part of the plan) and also get bids for Park Place, then choose based on which one fit into the remaining $168,000.

Landers said that Park Place would not fit because that was a total reconstruction project. He said resurfacing as a temporary fix would be a waste of city resources.

Michelle Bauer noted that she and her fellow Ward 2 alderman, Kathy Horn, could name off streets in their ward that were in dire need of attention. She added that she was certain every alderman could do the same. She said that was the purpose behind the Paver program, to assist the aldermen in determining how to best utilize its budget.

Bauer would also say “shame on us” for not considering all these factors before the project went out for bid. She said that if aldermen were not happy with the plan, they should have said so much earlier, before the bidding process began. She said for the city to not act “doesn’t speak well of us.”

Landers also commented, naming off several streets in town that were a big concern. He went on to say that part of the dilemma is to also evaluate what is going on under the streets. He said if the sewers are bad and will have to be redone, then it would be wrong to do a big capital project that did not include the sewers. He said if the street department didn’t coordinate with the sewer department the outcome would be that new roads would end up being cut up and patched when sewer reconstruction was done later.

Parrot then questioned, “Why do we need Paver? We know what needs done.” Hoefle said that from his perspective, Landers was an expert on the needs of the city, and had a better grasp on what needed done than even Paver would present.”

The aldermen would eventually come to a compromise, agreeing to vote for the actual bid of $332,000, and holding off on approving the expenditure of the remaining $168,000. Landers asked the aldermen to email him directly with their suggestions, but issued some guidelines. He noted that the plan for this money was not for oil and chip coatings, but for asphalt resurfacing. Because of this, the state would consider the projects as road resurfacing that would expect the city to do the ADA complaint work required by law. He said because of this when looking at streets, aldermen would need to understand that if the curbs and sidewalks were not handicapped accessible with ramps, the work to comply would have to be done if that street were selected.

Horn and Hoinacki rescinded their motion and second, and Hoinacki restated the motion to say the council approved the expenditure of the original plan only. Horn offered the second again. The item went up for vote, and passed unanimously with all eight aldermen present.

[Nila Smith]

Past related stories

January 2017 - Lincoln aldermen discuss purchase of software for streets repair


February 2017 - Lincoln aldermen vote 5-3 in favor of street evaluation program