Pothole Problem Plagues San Angelo

 

SAN ANGELO, TX — City Manager Daniel Valenzuela said the number one complaint he hears from citizens right now involves potholes. Across the City, potholes are appearing faster than City crews can fill them.

City Operations Director Shane Kelton said the problem is especially bad this year because earlier in the year, there was a large amount of rain. Then as the summer months drew on, the rain subsided and was replaced by record-breaking dry heat. Hot pavement on damp ground is a recipe for cracked asphalt, Kelton explained.

San Angelo isn’t the only city experiencing a pothole crisis. Kelton said for about five weeks, the City was unable to find a vendor for asphalt material. The supply of cold patch material could not keep up with demand. And then there was the rain that curtailed manufacturing the asphalt material.

“We had a lot of spring rain, and with the wet weather, the cold patch material wasn’t being manufactured,” Kelton said. “And this stuff has a shelf life so we don’t like to stock too much of it even if we could anticipate the shortage.”

While obtaining supplies for fixing the potholes have finally caught up, Kelton said his other problem is retaining workers for the City street repair crew. In 2015, under Mayor Morrison, part of the multi-year $80 million streets repaving plan was to reconstitute a fulltime street crew to attack potholes as the City embarked on major street reconstruction on roadways like Bell Street.

Maintaining a street repair crew is harder than just budgeting money to pay for it.

“I lost four more workers last week,” Kelton said. As fast as the City can hire a worker to be on the street crew they’ll leave for the private sector. Kelton said he was already short eight workers before an additional four turned in their notice last week.

Entry-level street repair laborers make $10.61 per hour. That is not enough to keep them at the City after they are trained to operate the street repair equipment.

“They’ll get their CDL while here at the City and then leave for better pay in the oil field,” Kelton said.

There isn’t a specific area where the problem persists. The potholes are popping up all over the City, Kelton said. The worst areas Kelton has noticed are on Ben Ficklin Road on the south side of town and many of the numbered streets in the Lake View area.

“Many of those streets in Lake View were just caliche roads after the City annexed the area in the 1950s,” Kelton said. Over the years, those old caliche roads were overlaid with a coat of asphalt starting i the 1970s. Kelton estimates 90 percent of the roads in the northern numbered streets have maybe two layers of seal coat atop caliche.

“We don’t built streets like that anymore, but we have to work with the way they were built here years ago,” Kelton said.

City Manager Valenzuela said the problem couldn’t be fixed only by dedicating more money to the problem alone. He said his staff is looking for ways to improve worker retention.

The City is responsible for paving about 1,200 lane miles of roadways inside the city limits. The Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, maintains major thoroughfares like Knickerbocker Road, Sherwood Way, and Bryant Blvd.

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Lake View was annexed by the City of San Angelo in the 1950s. The paving of the caliche roads there started in the 1970s. The story originally stated the annexation happened in the 1970s. 

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You simply don't pay enough.
But go ahead, build more infrastructure, hire more managers and engineers. That's what all the big cities do and guess what? The problem only gets worse over time. Sadly we might need to actually hire a rocket scientist to explain it to city council if we can tear them away from beautification of the Concho Puddle or The Glowing Money Pit, a.k.a., Hickory project.

Btw, see all the police out giving tickets lately? "See city council, look how much money we bring in!" Oh yeah, somebody's pushing for a major cash infusion this fiscal year.

LMAO.... Excuses, excuses, excuses.... Kelton says too much rain then the weather was too hot and dry, or there's no asphalt available at the time it's needed..... Oh, and then there are employee's leave like flocks of birds flying South for the Winter.... AND then there's Mr. suave & debonair Valenzuela who is scratching his head trying to figure out ways to retain employees..... Maybe thinking along the lines of decent pay might be a starting point. It's pretty sad when one can go to work at a convenience store sitting on a stool selling gas and beer and make better pay than what a city employee is paid for hard manual labor..........

What a freak’n crock of crap! Valenzuela is clueless. Anyone with a brain knows you have to pay more than McDonalds if you expect to keep anyone. I think it’s time for him to go milk another town to death! I haven’t seen this so-called road repair crew since Springtime & the repairs where an embarrassment to the city name!

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