5 Year Timeline

Welcome to the Street Maintenance page. On this page, you will find information about the street maintenance plan. You will also see a 5-year timeline, and a map of how the city is broken up.

If you have any problems or questions, please call (309) 477-2325.

We have recently completed the first year of our first attempt at a multi-year street maintenance plan. This is intended to serve as the wrap-up of that first year. 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. Note that I divided the community into seven fairly equal-sized areas that I would like to concentrate our seal coating efforts in. My 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 seal coating. We would get better unit prices if we do 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 anticipate picking up another "oversized" area in 2000 due to anticipated favorable unit prices in that year plus the City Council has appropriated previous reserve funds for street maintenance. We now foresee where we may be able to conduct the first 7-year cycle of seal coating all of the residential streets within a 5-year period of time.

Although the intent of this maintenance plan is to establish a regular program of seal coating the residential streets, we will continue to undertake other forms of street maintenance. Over the past three years, the thinner sand/slag overlay has been very successful. Derby and Court (Downtown) Streets are 1999 examples of this process. However, for the purposes of this plan, I am 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. In 1999, we brought back the Heating & Scarifying process. This hot in-place recycling program was very successful and allowed us to seal coat some streets that had originally been scheduled for an overlay. We will likely recommend this again in 2000.
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 2001 in the same area that we will be seal coating in 2002.

In addition, it is our intent to implement the program of repairing some brick streets starting this year. A Draft inventory of the Brick Streets was included as a supplement to the 1999 5-Year Plan. I am also developing a plan to present to the City Manager/City Council and ultimately to the residents of brick streets. That plan would identify those brick streets in need of repair. The normal maintenance would include a blacktop overlay of the street. It is the intent to meet with affected residents and give them the option of incurring at least a portion of the additional costs (above the overlay cost) of repairing/replacing the brick streets with bricks or some alternative technological alternatives. 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.

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.