Roads
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Matthew, thanks for the call for agenda items. That¡¯s a real step forward. The County Resource Manual says that elections
are held in
November, but I would be in favor of having them at a time to
maximize
participation so not necessarily November. I¡¯m very sorry to miss the up-coming Board
Meeting on Wednesday and miss
hearing what Jimmy has found out regarding estimates for
chip-sealing the
unpaved roads. As I said in an email following the last Board
meeting, we shouldn¡¯t be making decisions
about our roads
until we understand the finances of all options and set long
term priorities
and goals.
My present thought on priorities are as follows: (1) No higher taxes
(2) Maintain the trunk roads
(Fairfield Cr and Paseo
Venado) at a ¡°satisfactory¡± level. Note, I don¡¯t say ¡°excellent¡±
level. How are
we going to define ¡°satisfactory¡±?
(3) If it¡¯s financially realistic on a reasonable timeline, plan to pave (i.e., chip seal) the unpaved roads, probably in stages
(4) If
it¡¯s financially
unrealistic on any reasonable timeline to pave the remaining
unpaved roads,
then reduce taxes to a maintenance level in the next few years.
I spend about 500 hours a year staring down at pavement from my road bike, so I pay pretty close attention to the quality of pavement. We don¡¯t want to let cracks to exist in our roads like shown in the attached Photo 1. Water seeps into the cracks and vegetation starts to grow, and the road starts to deteriorate quickly. The cracks in the road have been sealed in the road shown in Photo 2, and to me, that road is perfectly satisfactory. In my opinion, Fairfield Cr is in excellent shape. It has a few potholes caused by either flaws in the paving or something unusual below the pavement. If you look closely, you can find a few hairline cracks but there are few if any noticeable cracks. There relatively little traffic on Fairfield, a few hundred vehicles a day. I suspect that Fairfield can be maintained at a satisfactory level for at least another decade, perhaps two, fairly inexpensively. The pavement on Paseo Venado is much thinner than Fairfield Cr, and a section of maybe 50 feet long near the intersection with Fairfield should probably be replaced soon. But again, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to be a great expense to maintain Paseo Venado. These are just my thoughts. What we need are realistic estimates. Ken |
