HUMBOLDT — City Council members weighed the options between two approaches to maintaining streets Monday night, debating cost versus technique.
A decision was on the table that had the council choose between chip and seal and asphalt overlay. Chip and seal, a technique that council members Dan Julich and Mark Slater referred to as the cheaper route in terms of up front costs, would provide a projected five-year life of the roads repaired in that fashion. The technique requires equipment and personnel that the city must acquire itself. Julich had reservations about the process.
“If we do it this way then the first sections of street that we do now will be ready for repair by the time we get done with other sections,” Julich said. “We’ll constantly be tearing up the streets.”
The other approach to street repair was asphalt overlay. That process is considered more expensive initially, but Julich and Slater extolled its virtues. According to Julich and Slater, Allen County Commissioners are onboard with coming in to assist in the overlay of city streets. Allen County owns the equipment needed for the job. That fact combined with the experience that county workers have with the equipment means less potential for a, “steeper learning curve,” and thus potential mistakes that would need to be corrected a second time according to Slater.
The cost savings from avoiding potential budget overages, combined with not having to hire additional employees were a major selling point for the council. Another positive were the materials used would qualify them for potential grants and other state and federal money. If the council went with the chip and seal option no qualifying funding would be available. Finally, the projected 15-year lifespan of the asphalt approach convinced the council to go with the somewhat pricier approach.
However, the project will not proceed until after a ballot issue has been decided on how to fund the project. Ballots will be mailed to each home in Humboldt. Up for vote will be a half-cent sales tax increase for the city. The council agreed the issue should be put to a vote in order to give citizens a chance to show how serious the community is about maintaining the streets.
“I think it’s really the only right thing we can do here,” Mayor Nobby Davis said. “We can’t ask people to pay more without giving them the chance to vote on it. This way we’ll know what the community really wants and if they’re serious about fixing stuff like our streets.”
The council also debated several other items. The Child Safety Zone Act was tabled for further work on language in the ordinance and to make sure it didn’t conflict with state statute. The application to place City Square Park and the bandstand in the park on the National Historic Register was tabled until more details were able to be ironed out on the impact to the immediate surrounding area. A local purchase policy was considered but tabled in order to, “codify the language of the policy,” and to decide if the city wanted to make it a policy of simply a guideline which would allow for more flexibility, according to Fred Works, city attorney.
