The Roeland Park city council on Monday evening approved its 2020 street maintenance task order, as drawn up by the city engineers at Lamp Rynearson.
In 2020, 12 streets will receive either a chip seal or ultra-thin bonded asphalt surface (UBAS) street treatment. The first treatment seals cracks by spraying a mixture, spreading chip rocks on it and then rolling the chip rocks until they are embedded in the surface, according to the city of Overland Park. UBAS treatment involves a portion of the top of the existing pavement and then applying UBAS to seal the pavement, according to Overland Park.
Below are the streets that will receive a UBAS treatment in 2020:
- W. 57th Terrace between Birch Street and Roeland Drive
- Sycamore Drive between Alder Drive and Cedar Street, and between Roe Boulevard and Buena Vista Street
- W. 50th Street between Southridge Street and Clark Drive
- Granada Street, Fontana Street and El Monte Street from Sycamore Drive south
- Catalina Street from Buena Vista Street south
Below are the streets that will receive a chip seal treatment in 2020:
- W. 50th Terrace between Nall Avenue and Rosewood Drive
- Rosewood Drive from W. 50th Terrace to W. 51st Street
- W. 54th Street between Roe Boulevard and Buena Vista Street
- Catalina Street between W. 47th Terrace and W. 48th Street
- Neosho Lane between W. 48th Street and Elledge Drive
- W. 48th Street between Delmar Street and Catalina Street, and between Parish Drive and Mohawk Drive
- Fontana Street. Delmar Street and Alhambra Street between W. 47th Street to Elledge Drive
The annual city budget for in-house street maintenance and surface treatments is $370,000 with roughly $80,000 or less spent “on the in-house street maintenance program,” according to city documents. The leftover $290,000 is used for contracted surface treatments, but the UBAS and chip seal estimates for this year’s work puts the city $20,000 over budget. Currently, the UBAS treatment amounts to over $193,000 and the chip seal comes in at over $117,000. Both estimates have a 5% built-in contingency to account for increased prices.
Public Works Director Donnie Scharff on Jan. 21 brought forth a recommendation to city council to discuss the street maintenance task order, at which time he suggested the city use the leftover funds from the in-house portion of the program and the 5% contingencies to cover the deficit. Additionally, Scharff said the city will have to see what the bids for the chip seal and UBAS treatments come in at, perhaps under budget.
Mayor Mike Kelly said he hates chip seal, and while he understands it benefits certain surfaces and is important, he hears numerous complaints from residents about it. Councilmember Jennifer Hill said that last year, the city council heard many concerns about gravel, and asked Scharff to clarify that the gravel is chip seal.
Councilmember Claudia McCormack said chip seal was done on her street, Linden Street. Although residents disliked the chip seal process, McCormack said it turned out for the best. Scharff said the UBAS and chip seal treatments are essentially the same thing, but are done differently. He also said the UBAS treatment is a longer process than chip seal.
The city council then discussed potentially selecting a street to take off of the task order in case the bids come in high, or leftover funds are unavailable. Councilmember Jim Kelly said that if Roe 2020 were not happening this year, he would not be as concerned about allocating leftover funds to these treatments.
The city council decided to put the item on new business for Monday evening’s meeting, at which point they approved the maintenance order unanimously. If a street needs to be taken off of the list, Scharff will present another recommendation to city council at that time.
