City Initiates $4.5 Million Annual Street Maintenance Program

The San Angelo City Council Tuesday was briefed on the city staff's planned approach to repairing streets that will involve sealcoating. This is part of the ongoing $4.5 million annual street repair program that City Manager Daniel Valenzuela pushed for in each year's budget cycle, starting this year.

It’s no secret that San Angelo streets are in need of maintenance and in some areas complete reconstruction. Sealcoating is considered a preventive maintenance for roadways, sort of like putting a coat of wax on your car or waterproofing an outdoor deck.

Asphalt itself is used as a covering on streets due to its waterproofing properties; it protects the aggregate inside the road from absorbing water which can create deterioration. The asphalt pavement you see on city roadways is basically a “roof” to the inner core of the road, meaning that it covers and protects the actual insides of the road. Below the “roof” are layers of graded stone aggregates of varying depths depending on the ground conditions the road was built on and what the load of the traffic on that particular roadway is zoned for or may be.

City of San Angelo Operations Manager Shane Kelton presented his proposed approach to council yesterday morning.

“These are mostly residential streets that we wouldn’t necessarily concentrate on with major reconstruction work,” Kelton said.

Councilmember Marty Self, who requested the information, initiated a short Q&A with Kelton.

“How are these streets selected?” Self asked.

“Based on where they have been in the cycle in the past, how long they have been without a sealcoat on them and based on visual appraisal by our engineering inspectors,” Kelton answered.

“Any idea when Single Member District 2 might get a street,” Self prodded.

“We got really close to you this year, but not quite,” Kelton replied, with a slight chuckle.

Self shot back, “You didn’t get to me last year and you didn’t get to me the year before either.”

Kelton paused thoughfully for a moment and replied, “Hopefully next year…[The council] has given me enough money to get on a decent rotation, so you should actually start seeing the sealing going on around town in a lot faster pattern at this point.”

 To which Councilmember Elizabeth Grindstaff spoke up. “So if the [to-be-completed road condition] study indicates that one street should have a higher priority for sealcoat than the ones you have selected here, are you going to be able to change that?”

“We could if there’s something that needs to be,” said Kelton. “The bids came in lower than what we were expecting. Of course, this is the largest volume we’ve ever done before, so it’s uncharted territory for us. I do have some room in our budget to be able to do some change orders and move some stuff around so, if we do have higher priorities that come across in the study, we will be able to look at those.”

Satisfied with the answer she was given, Grindstaff responded, “I look forward to using the study to prioritize. So see? I’m not even mentioning my district number.” 

 “I am mentioning mine, and I am going to continue to mention mine,” Self said in a stern tone as others laughed.

Nevertheless funds have been set aside by the council for this specific purpose.

“These are budgeted funds. Y'all set aside the funds in the last budget year for the increased rotation for the sealcoat program and all maintenance programs,” Kelton reminded the council.

"It’s an eight-year rotation,” said City Manager Daniel Valenzula. “We want to make sure that over the eight year period we have all of these streets maintained. We have two different things going on, maintenance and also the reconstruction.”

As the city has learned in the past, it is best to designate a sealcoating inspector to every crew assigned the sealcoating task. “Every crew that will be working sealcoating will have an inspector with each crew,” Kelton reassured.

Harry Thomas took the podium for public comment with a suggestion to council.

“I’ve looked at the number of streets that Shane and his crew has proposed. I would encourage staff to take a quick look we’ve got an eight-year rotation, let’s put that out there so the public knows what streets are going to be done next year, what streets will be done in 2017 and so forth, so we get an idea,” Thomas said. “We have councilmen up here saying we haven’t gotten any (sealcoating) in our area, the public would also like to know that. I’ve got a street that really needs some repair done right now, and I’m not in this rotation this year, so let’s put it out there so the people know and I know when these streets are sealcoating.”

The mayor and council agreed to put together such a list.

There should be an update in the coming city council meetings for a list of the prioritized streets to be sealcoated.