CITY WORKS TO SET STREETS PRIORITIES; PROGRAM EVALUATES CONDITION OF EACH BLOCK

Cape Girardeau officials have started a comprehensive program to evaluate the condition of every block of city street.

City Manager J. Ronald Fischer said the new "Pavement Management System" will enable the city to set priorities for street repairs and replacement.

The program is the brainchild of Assistant Public Works Director Kevin McMeel, who said it's something which has met with success in other cities.

"It's something that's been coming on for several years," McMeel said. "It allows you to index all your streets to a condition, based on a pavement condition index.

"What that does is let you establish priorities based on the best return for your dollars," he added. "It gets you away from the worst-first scenario."

McMeel said that too often the city has had to react to problems by paving badly deteriorated streets without fully knowing the reason for the streets' disrepair.

"If a street has failed, you don't want to do an overlay when there's a good chance it will go down in a few more years," he said. "Cities that are using this program, or ones like it, are finding they can spend the same amount of money and do a lot more repairs and maintenance."

The program involves a physical inspection of each street in the city. Information is then fed into a computer, which will rate the street on a scale of zero to 100, based on deterioration of the street, cost of available repair options, and the available funding.

The system Cape Girardeau is using was developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is administered by the American Public Works Association.

"The city of Rolla has been using this program for about three years," McMeel said. "They've made their street budget go a lot farther."

Emmett Baker Jr., Cape Girardeau's projects coordinator, is one of two workers doing the inspections. Baker's knowledge as the city's former streets superintendent has been a valuable asset to the program, McMeel said.

Baker said that since the program started in July, he and technician Howard Propst have inspected about 420 city blocks, and "inputted" about 219 into the computer system.

McMeel said the work that's been done represents about a quarter of the entire city.

"It's about a 2-year program to go all over the city to get this done," said Baker.

He said the program is versatile enough to be used for a similar review of the city's sidewalks. He said it's the most equitable way to evaluate street needs throughout the city.

"We can look at this, and people of the city I think will be getting a fair chance at their street getting fixed," he said. "It doesn't matter what section of the city the street's in, we can go in and fix it.

"It's a real objective program in which everybody will be treated fairly."

McMeel also said the pavement system will be an effective tool to ensure fair and efficient street maintenance and repair in all sections of the city.

"Right now, admittedly, we try to spread the work around the city so we're not slighting any particular area," he said. "But I think this will be a little more objective tool to do that. It's really the most unbiased way."

Baker also said the information gleaned from the inspections can be presented to the public to illustrate street needs and persuade voters to support a tax measure for transportation.

"Maybe down the road a couple years, the city can go to the public and try to get a half-cent transportation tax that's so badly needed in Cape Girardeau," Baker said. "We're doing the homework before we go, so we have something to take to the people. They'll know what the extra money will enable the city to accomplish in terms of street repairs."

Fischer said a transportation tax is an issue that likely will be brought before the voters within a year to 18 months. "A transportation tax is something that's becoming more and more important every day," he added.

The city manager said that projects such as the widening of Broadway, Independence Street and Bloomfield Road and improvements to Perryville and Hopper Roads are just some of the projects that will be difficult to do without additional financing.

Fischer said he hopes the new program will show voters that the city is making the most efficient use of available funds.

"What I have felt is if we can show the people, with projects such as Lexington, what we can do with limited funds, then they'll be more apt to support a tax for some of these other projects," he said. "We've tried to take an approach that we do as much as we can with the money we do have, then show people that if we just have that tax for five years, what significant improvements we can do."

Fischer said the new program also will enable the city council to more effectively budget for street repairs and replacements.

"It will set priorities," he added. "Right now, a lot of times priorities are set by our engineering and public works department having driven over areas and seeing sections that need repairs."

McMeel said he plans to continue the street inspection program after all the city streets have been logged into the computer system.

"Once we get the whole city surveyed and inspected, we hope to get maybe a third or half of it reinspected each year, so that no street will go more than three years without an inspection," he said.