City of Pekin, IL

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5 Year Maintenance

In 2002 we completed the fourth of our first multi-year street maintenance plan. Due to funding cuts we had a very abbreviated street maintenance program in 2003. This is intended to serve as a status report on our multi-year street maintenance plan. In general this 5-year street maintenance schedule is intended to be consistent with the 5-Year Capital Budget that has been so helpful in anticipating the City's expenditures over a multi-year period of time. Not only is this helpful in our financial planning, but also with respect to coordination of work with all utilities.

In general the intent of the 5-year program is mainly for streets to be seal coated. The seal coating process is a good form of preventative street maintenance. The community is divided into seven fairly equal sized areas that I would like to concentrate our seal coating efforts in. Our original intent was to complete the last two (of the seven) seal coat areas in 2004 and 2005 which would put us in a 7-Year Seal Coat schedule, which some experts consider ideal for that type of pavement maintenance. We would get better unit prices if we perform work in targeted areas. The contractor has much less mobilization, therefore we are paying for work not moving from one location to another. However, due to two major factors, we were able to undertake an additional 40% area of seal coating in 1999. First of all, a very favorable bidding climate resulted in low unit prices. In addition, our Street Division did much more base repair work than had been envisioned. We were fortunate in completing “over sized” areas in 2000, 2001 and 2002 due to anticipated favorable unit prices in those years plus the City Council has appropriated previous reserve funds for street maintenance. We were able to conduct the first seven year cycle of seal coating all of the residential streets within a 4-year period of time. Due to this accelerated completion schedule, the City was able to skip the 2003 Year with only a very limited program. We plan on resuming our annual program by bidding the 2004 program in November 2003 so that we can decide whether to do the work contractually or look at doing it in-house.

Although the intent of this maintenance plan was to establish a regular program of seal coating the residential streets, we will continue to undertake other forms of street maintenance. However, for the purposes of this plan, we are not differentiating at this point as to what streets will receive the traditional 1 1/2" overlay (Bituminous Concrete) versus the 1 1/4" thin overlay (Bituminous Mixture Special). For the most part, the list of streets to be overlaid are limited to the major collectors and arterials. Exceptions to this rule are the need for some streets to receive a structural overlay. Also in 1999, we brought back the Heating & Scarifying process. This hot in-place recycling program has been very successful in each subsequent year and allowed us to seal coat some streets that had originally been scheduled for an overlay. We may recommend this again in 2004 and subsequent years.

It is the intent for additional residential streets to be added as the funding develops on an annual basis, especially in those areas eligible for CDBG funds. CDBG funds may also be utilized in sidewalk repair or construction work in the same areas. We are now evaluating the possibility of implementing a 5-year program of sidewalk and/or curb improvements. That program would concentrate the repair or replacement of applicable sections of sidewalks and/or curbs a year in advance of the street repairs. For example, we hope to be working on the sidewalks in 2004 in the same area that we will be seal coating in 2005.

We also took the first steps toward implementing the program of repairing some brick street patches. A Draft inventory of the Brick Streets was included as a supplement to the 1999 5-Year Plan. In August of 2001, the City Council supported the repair of all but three of the City’s brick streets. During the summer of 2003, it was cost justified to add two people to the Street Division staff with the majority of their time to be devoted to the repair of the brick streets. The repair of the other brick streets is scheduled for 2004 and 2005. Those other three streets were deemed as beyond normal repair and will be candidates for major repair or reconstruction. The Downtown area is not addressed in this plan because of the planned expenditure of TIF funds over the next five years to repair/separate sewers followed by the resurfacing of those streets.

Overlay Cost includes overlay, base repair, manhole adjustments, prime and prime coat aggregate. However, this excludes any necessary milling that could add up to 50% on these unit costs.

** Seal Coat Cost includes seal coat, seal coat aggregate and base repair.

Keep in mind that priorities change, especially here in the Midwest where our freeze-thaw cycle can change the condition of a street almost overnight. We will continue to work with other governmental agencies such as the Illinois Department of Transportation, Tazewell County Highway Department, and Peoria's Public Works Department as we explore further options of joint bidding work as well as developing technology changes.