Bumpy ride ahead for Ephrata street maintenance

EPHRATA — This year’s harsh winter has left roads across the region cracked and potholed.

It’s no different in Ephrata, where city officials are struggling to find the money, and considering several options — a designated sales tax or car tabs — to fund the needed repairs.

“There’s $145,000 worth of repairs from the January storm damage, and it will get worse, the first is not yet out of the ground,” Ephrata City Administrator Wes Crago told the city council Wednesday night.

“It has been a rough winter,” said Mayor Bruce Reim.

Potholes affect about a quarter of the roads in town. Because of damage to roads, the city has limited the weight of vehicles that can travel on A Street Northeast, and has closed 14th and 15th streets Southwest entirely, according to a news release.

Because there have been almost no state funds for road maintenance in Ephrata, and the city’s four-member maintenance crew has been busy keeping sewers clear, removing snow and ice, maintaining the cemetery, and cutting trees, Crago said there has been little time or money to maintain the city’s streets.

Crago is asking the council to considering proposing a designated sales tax or an additional car tab fee to fund a regular chip sealing for the city’s residential streets.

While the council can approve either, Crago suggested a series of public meetings to discuss the subject followed by a city-wide referendum.

“Voters will have the final say,” he said.

For 2017, Ephrata budgeted nearly $868,000 for its road fund. Of that, nearly $346,000 are dedicated to specific projects, and another $400,000 for salaries and supplies to fund the department’s regular ongoing operations, including street cleaning, snow and ice removal, and normal road maintenance.

Crago said he expects regular chip sealing — coating a road in liquid asphalt, covering that with a layer of crushed gravel, and and then pressing it all into the road surface with something like a steam-roller — to cost about $120,000 annually.

A number of Ephrata’s streets were redone as part of the city’s seven-year waterline project beginning in 2007. However, while some of the city’s streets have a gravel base that allows water to drain so little is trapped under the asphalt when the temperatures get below freezing, a number of others are simply asphalt on top of dirt.

While this winter was unusual, Crago said the problem isn’t going to go away.

“The longer we wait, the worse it will get,” he told the city council.