Lack of money carves a hole on city streets
Bud Lane, mentioned by engineers as one of the streets in worst shape of all the city, shows clear signs of wear and tear on its asphalt.
Prospect of more initiatives set to dent maintenance budget
Drive around and you will feel it. Walk around and you will see it. The streets of Moses Lake are not what they used to be, and they will get worse before they get better.
"The streets are pretty bad now," said city manager Joe Gavinski. City engineer Gerry McFaul agreed, saying a shortage of funds has limited the amount of repairs the city can do to degrading asphalt.
The degradation of asphalt occurs, McFaul explained, when it begins to lose volatiles, which cause it to become brittle and less resistant to cold temperatures and heavy traffic, which may cause it to break.
The solution is to chip-seal and crack-seal every seven years, he said, slowing the decay of the asphalt. This maintenance keeps the asphalt serviceable and reduces the need to completely replace it.
McFaul said periodic sealing comes at a smaller cost than that of a total redo. "Sealing costs about $1.30 a square yard," he said. "A new street is like $20 a square yard."
Without funds, however, Moses Lake runs the risk of ending up with what McFaul termed as "Spokane-type" streets.
"Spokane has terrible streets," he said. "If we don't chip-seal or crack-seal, we end up with potholes everywhere, and our maintenance crews playing catch-up without ever getting caught up. We will barely fix one when there's going to be another one."
The city of Moses Lake, McFaul said, uses a system where the streets are judged and assigned a score, from one to 100. If the street scores about 75, it is in need of a chip seal.
The system is still there. The money is another story.
"It's pretty bad," McFaul said. "We used to have utility tax money, and it went down by about $50,000."
One of the culprits is the enactment of Initiative 695, which greatly reduced the income for cities from the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax.
"Before MVET, there was general fund money to transfer," McFaul said. "There has not been (that funding) for the last two to three years."
Gavinski explained that when funding is eliminated or reduced, it takes a while for a lack of maintenance to show up. "We are a couple of years into the reduced funding because of I-695," he said. "Lack of funding is starting to show around the edges."
The city manager warned that things will get worse if the newest initiative, I-864, passes in November. Gavinski noted that other sources of money used in street repairs have declined, as well.
"Sales tax income is flat, property tax income has been reduced and interest income is down," he said. There is money but not enough for the repairs needed."
Another factor has been the fact that reduced funds have obligated the city to spread whatever money is available on to tasks other than street repair, such as handicap ramps and sidewalk repair.
"Federal laws came up requiring handicap ramps and then truncated domes," he said, referring to the name given to the design requirement on sidewalks to help blind people determine the boundary between the sidewalk and street.
A court case from San Francisco requiring sidewalks to be fixed if they presented a differential greater than an established standard put a further dent on what had once been almost exclusively the street repair budget.
"With that number of things, there is not much money available for street repairs," he said.
The MVET, the court rulings and the Americans with Disabilities Act's requirements have shrunk the budget to the point that in 2004 dollars, the department had close to a $1 million available for repairs in 1995.
The amount has been reduced to $380,000 this year. These reductions have even affected the city's personnel, as one engineer was let go last year.
Difficulties nonetheless, the desires of the people have continued to be heard, especially from those who live on gravel roads.
"People want us to put asphalt on their streets," he said. "We used to say 'put a sewer line and we will put in the asphalt,' but now we don't have the money to do that. We hear 'why did you chip seal instead of an overlay?' and the issue is the same — the costs."
Though he rates Moses Lake streets at seven on a scale of one to 10, and notes that the city's street have always averaged between a seven and a nine, McFaul warns that something is different this time.
"In the past we were a seven," he said, "but we were headed to having better streets. Now we are a seven but we are headed in the wrong direction.
"Another winter and it is just going to get worse," he said.