In 2001, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic wondered if some on City Council, including the current mayor, were right to wonder whether the city should be spending more to maintain its roads.
It’s a perennial issue. The snow melts. Potholes return. And as sure as springtime, disgruntled drivers with busted rims take their complaints to City Hall.
So, Plusquellic assembled a task force and paid a consulting firm $260,000 to determine whether to increase the $2.8 million he was spending annually on street resurfacing.
Plusquellic’s task force concluded in the spring of 2002 that $10 million would be needed every year for a decade to raise the condition of the roads from “fair” to “good.” Funding reached $5.5 million in 2007 then tumbled by 2010 to $2.05 million. There it stayed for five years.
By 2015, the city’s engineering bureau adjusted its target; $27 million would be needed each year for a decade.
And now, after inheriting an infrastructure that becomes exponentially more expensive the longer it’s neglected, Mayor Dan Horrigan is spending $300,000 less than Plusquellic did 16 years ago.
In the next couple of months, Horrigan and his staff will meet to reassess capital spending levels, including whether to spend $2.55 million on resurfacing next year, as he has annually since taking office.
“I would love to be able to triple it for eight, nine years,” said Horrigan. “We’re not nearly dedicating enough resources to” reverse — or even slow — the deterioration.
On a scale of 0 to 100, Akron’s roads scored a 71 in 2008 and a 59 today, according to JG3 Roadway Management Solutions, a private consultancy.
Horrigan is two-for-two on mild winters, twice avoiding major road repairs in the spring. But it’s only a matter of time, especially since there are many roads that have crumbled to the core and might not support a new layer on top — the quickest and cheapest fix aside from filling potholes.
When the bad winter and bill hits, though, the city won’t be able to borrow its way out of decades of neglect. A massive sewer project is sucking 60 percent of the city’s capital budget, much of it paid for in loans.
“We’re just up against it when it comes to that entire debt structure, and what funds are going to it,” Horrigan said. “A lot of that is going to debt service. We’ve just got a lot less wiggle room than I’d like from a financial standpoint.”
Precious dollars
The fewer dollars spent today cover even fewer miles than they once did.
As was the case in 2016, the city will dedicate less than 1 percent of the capital budget to resurface roads this year. About 56 percent of that comes from citywide income tax collections, the rest from property owners with frontage that lines the newly paved roads.
However, the price of a ton of asphalt and the labor to spread it has more than doubled since 2006.
These fluctuating costs and revenues have resulted in a couple of good years — like 2008, when the price of asphalt dropped 10 percent and the city repaved 53 miles — and a lot of bad years — like 2010, when the city spent $2.05 million and barely covered 9 miles of roads.
Funding remained low until 2015 when council members pushed for more funding after back-to-back devastating winters. In his last year, Plusquellic put up $3.8 million, enough to plug a few more holes but far from the $27 million called for.
Paving has also fallen behind. The city’s service department projects 2017 will be the seventh year in the past decade with less than 20 of the city’s 829 miles of roads getting repaved.
Exponential cost
Most new roads last about 20 years. As they age, though, cracks beneath the surface return more quickly after repairs.
The longer a road goes without regular maintenance, the more likely it will need to be replaced. This is why neglect has an exponential cost.
The average city mile can be resurfaced for $50,000.
However, years of neglect means the whole mile will need to be replaced at an average cost of $1.2 million.
Picking jobs
To pick the roads that get resurfaced each year, Service Director Chris Ludle relies on JG3 Roadway Management Solutions.
The company’s software divides the city’s 829 miles of roads into 9,067 sections, some as short as 40 feet and others stretching over a mile between intersections.
Each section is labeled as a main, secondary or residential roadway. Main roads, which get more traffic, are about 5 inches thicker than residential streets, which cost less to replace.
The report also gives each section a score of zero to 100 based on condition. This durability ranking allows Ludle to target what precious few dollars he’s given.
First, he divides the $2.55 million equally among the 10 city wards.
He then funds resurfacing projects that, if neglected, are sure to become more costly replacement jobs. Next up are roads he had planned to but couldn’t get done the year before, usually because of funding.
Finally, he’ll fill up the schedule with new projects, preferably those clustered together because it’s cheaper to drive equipment from one site to the next, or maybe a street where the sewers and water lines need to be replaced, so he can scratch off two or more projects at once.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .