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in Grant County · Public works committee (part 1) · 2025-04-15 · full transcript
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    1:12  Okay, we are going to go ahead and call together call to order this uh committee meeting for public works. Um today's
    1:19  April 15th and it's 5:32. So we'll get started with the committee looks like is all present.
    1:27  Eric Marshall and Mike Klein. Okay. Uh today we are doing this
    1:35  committee because we had an ordinance sent to us for review which is on the requiring the paving of all city alleys
    1:43  with rolled asphalt uh for the city of Marian. We did post the meeting and I know at least a couple of us posted the
    1:51  ordinance online to try and get some feedback which I didn't hadn't seen any yet as of today. Um, I've got copies of
    1:58  the ordinance on the bench up there if anybody wants to see a copy. And, um, our hope was to get some feedback from
    2:06  individuals within the city to see what their thoughts are on, uh, paving versus rock alleys.
    2:18  Um, and then we'll discuss then as time permits, we'll discuss some maybe changes or languages if any from the committee.
    2:30  Any opening remarks from anyone before we get going? Nick, did you want to pre
    2:37  preference it any with your thoughts on it? Anything different, I guess.
    2:44  Um, yeah, let me mute here.
    2:49  Um, yeah, I just challenge. So, if if you haven't read it, just make sure you read it all the way through because what I find is I'll get questions asked and I
    2:57  go, "Well, it's addressed in the ordinance." So, um it's not just saying they all have to be paved.
    3:06  Um there are caveats and there are exceptions. I just challenge that you make sure whoever's got a question or
    3:15  whatever, just read through it thoroughly.
    3:18  um if anything this just pushes the plan. I will say I will add on that you know as of today there's some new state
    3:25  laws that have changed tax collection and all that that's going to come into a factor on a lot of things that we're going to be talking about soon. So I do
    3:34  keep that in mind as well. I'm not asking for the city to just go spend a bunch of money. What I'm really pushing for is just let's have a plan have a
    3:42  discussion and I want I just wanted everyone in the community have an opportunity to speak
    3:51  Well, and to give a little bit of feedback, we did talk some about paving alleys when we were
    3:58  um putting together money through the budget process as far as when we were paving streets, if you recall, and
    4:06  talking about sidewalks and then putting money aside for alleys. At that time, we were presented with some general um
    4:13  estimates from my graft about what the costs would be if we did rock versus
    4:20  asphalt versus if it was just an overlay, if we had to take it all the way back down and do full pavement of
    4:28  alleys. And I believe this year we've had quite a few done that were replaced with stone and some that were taken that
    4:36  were paved and some that were broken up pavement and changed to stone. Is that correct from what I remember?
    4:46  Okay. Um, but that plan that that initial estimate, I think if we had done
    4:53  all of the alleys at once and they were all asphalt was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million, $9 million to $10 million. That sound right? Okay.
    5:06  Okay.
    5:07  Um, and so that's some of the conversation that started this with this ordinance because it puts a 10-year timeline on it, which was some of I
    5:16  think we wanted to do a discussion because that would be roughly a million a year, not accounting for any type of inflation, which as Nick said, there may
    5:25  be some changes into the into the amount of money that we would have to put into this, which would extend that timeline even longer.
    5:33  Um, so any other comments from the council or do we just want to or we can open it up and see what the public
    5:41  that's here wants to speak on and questions they may have that we may not have thought about. I just want to add I I have a print out.
    5:49  I was trying to find something to put on the screen here. The print out um Mike Graph put together. It's great. We had from last year for three options. Of
    5:57  course, it's not a one-sizefits-all, but it just for the public um to the cost to just mill
    6:06  down an asphalt alleyway and replace it with, you know, a new top coat. Uh 4 in, actually it's mil down 4 in, put
    6:16  three inches of a new binder, one new surface.
    6:19  So, um I think it was average cost depending on the length of the alley was about $14,000 per
    6:28  alley. Of course, that's going to change with different stretches and the the tonnage. Um, if you actually converted
    6:37  an alley like a street and actually milled down 8 in and put stone and then
    6:43  like you would a street, it's um about $20,000 an alley. And then the just so everyone has
    6:51  the numbers, if you just milled it out and put stone down, you're looking about $2,500 an
    6:58  alley. So that's just the numbers I want to share.
    7:09  Okay. Um, so we'll go ahead and open it up for any public comments or discussion if anybody's here that wants to speak on
    7:18  Alli's uh rock versus paving. um the what they feel might be the benefit of of going to
    7:27  all paving or if the way that the rock the new rock uh alleys seem to be working well in certain areas. I do have
    7:35  a sign-in sheet, but I realized I didn't put a pen up there just so that we can have your name um and address uh for the
    7:42  minutes uh to to keep a good record of that if you don't mind. Um, we will keep to a general timeline.
    7:53  Um, and if it ends up people carrying on too much, then we'll cut that off. We we do only have about an hour before the next meeting.
    8:23  And all you need to do is turn put the red button on so that we can hear. Okay.
    8:28  Thank you. My name is James Shelson. I'm a resident of 11:09 South Galler Street here in Mariam. And the first thing I'm
    8:36  going to say like this, our alley was paid until they tore it up and put gravel in it. And when we got down
    8:43  there, it took us over six or seven years to get it paved. And my understanding is just like
    8:51  this. Why would they tear up a personally good alley to put stone in it? This is my thing. You know, if you
    8:59  go and put stone in, make sure the alley needs the stone. Last last time we had stone in that alley, we had ruts in
    9:06  there so deep that I just go back to my knees in it in the alley. And when they put the pavement in there, it been shoot
    9:14  I bet you it been lasted almost 30 something years and it was still in excellent
    9:24  shape and that's what you know I said that's pretty good idea if I know you not going to be able to do all the
    9:31  alleys at once. you know each year do certain many uh amount but if you look
    9:37  at the wrong long term hey there's alley the last 30 years they ain't had to come patch it put gravel in it and nothing
    9:45  like that and there's people go up and down that alley all the time but now we're going to have the instance where they're going to have
    9:53  back like it was having big old craters and alley and the city doesn't get around I used to work for the city back in the 70s and 80s
   10:02  And I worked on them crews too that went out there and did that. I worked on the back of garbage truck and doing you know where you had to haul trash and you
   10:11  bouncing in the alley because they wouldn't fix it or they didn't have the budget to fix it. I'm not saying they
   10:18  you know what's what. But as you know concerned I got petition to give to the mayor for our block that
   10:26  that the alley was tore up that these the all the residents in that particular block once that alley put back the
   10:35  pavement but it's just like this I understand there's cost and everything but it's more cost in getting that then
   10:44  here here next year you probably have to go through the alleys and pour more gravel in it to smooth it out because because it's got dents in it and places
   10:52  in it that gravel moves. If it ain't got a place to stop it from moving, it's
   11:00  going to move move out of the way and going to make dents and grooves and things in it and then it's going to go
   11:08  everywhere, you know, in the yard when you're trying to mow and everything else. So, that's all I have to say. I hope y'all vote to do that. Thank you.
   11:19  Right. Thank you.
   11:25  My name is Jan Bowen, 1011 West Fifth Street, and I am all in favor of uh paving the alleys. When I first moved
   11:34  here 10 years ago, um I had to do a lot of work in the back part of my property
   11:41  uh next to the alley. And our alley is well it's I think it's like most it
   11:48  started out with the bricks then it was paved and now it's got holes and it's a big mess. Um not only that but the uh
   11:57  the grass and the ground has grown over the sides. So the alley I don't know how much how wide it should have been or you
   12:04  know from curb to curb it's now at least four feet narrower than what it should be. So, yes, I'm in favor of the uh
   12:14  definitely of paving and not rocks because when I moved in and had the work done in the back of my property, I
   12:21  couldn't afford to have it paved. So, I put the rocks in and you know, you're always carrying in that white dust uh
   12:28  from your from where you park. Also, in the uh section four, I see you have uh number two, it says the city may
   12:36  establish cost sharing programs. What would that be?
   12:44  And that's some of what the discussion is right now. We're not sure what that would look like or what that would be.
   12:49  This is just language that's put in there to allow if that was a direction the city wanted to go that they
   12:56  could my understanding at least that the cost saving or the cost sharing programs would be sim similar to like a 5050
   13:04  sidewalk program or something along those lines. Yeah. So, I could see if there was uh you know, if if a whole
   13:10  block um was maybe two residences, then I could see where that would be necessary. But then another part I was
   13:18  wondering if would it be possible when when our alley is going to be paved, could we have could we make arrangements to have the area where we park also
   13:27  paved and pay for it? So, I mean, that's something to think about anyway. Okay. Thank you.
   13:47  Hello. Um, my name is Kyle Whiteitman. I live at 3110 South Race Street. So, my alleyway is between 31st and 32nd Morice
   13:57  Selby. Um, I've gotten a hold of people taking pictures using the apps. Uh we
   14:03  got a tree uh the end of our driveway big or alley big cottonwood right on the
   14:12  easement. Uh lost limbs, big limbs. I've cleaned it up.
   14:18  Uh the problem that we have is a lot of abandoned properties where
   14:26  where we have where where I live or the properties are tied up in legal because
   14:34  somebody passed away and now it's left to their kids and there's problems with them and stuff of that nature.
   14:42  Uh we've had a lot of illegal dumping in our alley and stuff. Uh I've cleaned that up. I got overgrowth, you know.
   14:50  I've went down every year. I'm cleaning it up and stuff scratching my truck, you know,
   14:57  when I come down my alley. Who's responsible for that? You know, I mean, and everyone's like, well, you know, if you're using the alley, you need to be
   15:05  the one cleaning it up. Well, it's not my property. I mean, I have my property.
   15:11  I'm cleaning it up. I ought to be able to use the alley without scratching my vehicle. I'm cleaning up the trash. I've
   15:18  even stopped city workers driving down my road that have the dump truck, uh, the Dodge. It's like, "Hey, I got a
   15:25  bunch of illegal dumping right back here in the alley. Could you guys come back?
   15:31  I'll help you load it." Oh, you need to take pictures and send it to the city. You work for the city.
   15:38  I'm letting you know what is 10 minutes out of your time to come back there, clean it up when you're on my
   15:46  road. I I I don't understand. Another thing that uh I sat there, I was listening, you guys said that you have a quote for $10 million, $20,000 an alley
   15:55  if they take it down and stuff of that nature.
   16:00  Um you guys need to get other quotes. I could literally pour concrete
   16:07  the length of our alley and it wouldn't cost $20,000. I know that, you know, I'm in
   16:15  that business. Um, so if they're saying asphalt, asphalt's cheap, $20,000. And
   16:22  then if you guys are putting down stone and stuff, I can pull a triacle in two loads. You know, one load's 10 ton.
   16:32  You run that down, you get two loads.
   16:34  That's $1,200. You guys are getting taken. You need other quotes and stuff. I mean, $10
   16:41  million. You guys need to take other quotes. I personally don't want stone down in my driveway or in the
   16:50  alley because I drive down it, plow it and stuff like that. You ever plowed stone? That stuff
   16:58  sucks. And it's just going to cost more money. So that's all I have.
   17:12  Thank you.
   17:29  I'd like to me. No.
   17:35  No. Okay. You know who I am on that 5050 deal. I don't like it.
   17:42  Period.
   17:44  I've been in my house ever since 1987. Haven't had nothing done to my area at all except with this paving.
   17:53  They paved the street. That's the only thing ever been done in my area where I live at for that many
   18:01  years and the sidewalks and everything are gone.
   18:08  I'm not paying no 50/50 for for for to do something that I'm paying taxes and nobody doing nothing in my area. I paid
   18:15  for all them years and if if you ain't going to do nothing in my area, why should I have to
   18:24  pay for you to have had for something that you shouldn't be doing anyway? You understand what I'm saying? And that's that is not
   18:32  right. If you know what I'm talking about, there's a lot of areas that people paying all these taxes all these years and haven't did nothing and that's not fair to us.
   18:48  Okay. Thank you. Any other others here to to speak? Pardon?
   18:56  Go ahead. Yeah. I just had a question first off on the definitions. Uh I noticed that there There's nothing for
   19:04  what the rolled stone is. You have the paving. It seems like you we kind of
   19:11  ignored that as an option under what the definition is of what the rolled stone
   19:19  is. You got rolled asphalt, but nothing about the stone, how much it is, how deep it is, or anything like that. The
   19:28  second thing I would I would like to add, I'm not opposed to the alleys. I'm not. But what I am concerned about is
   19:38  prioritizing the the funds that have to be used by the public works to maintain
   19:46  the roads, the sidewalks, and now the alleys. There's only so much of a pie that's in there.
   19:55  So that that's the part that has to be figured out and brought forward and a
   20:03  little bit more transparency as to how many more roads do we need to do. People
   20:10  don't want to pay the extra for the alleys. They don't want to pay extra for the sidewalks.
   20:17  So the money that you have for that is is just limited. So you have to
   20:26  prioritize and that's my concern. Are we singularly focused on just the alleys
   20:34  and the paving of them or are we looking at the global view of of all what needs
   20:40  to be done as far as the infrastructure to make this make this happen. The second thing, the the final thing that I
   20:49  wanted to say was it's roughly $10 million if you account for inflation or whatever over that time frame over a
   20:58  10-year period. What happens if there's a change in administration and it's not
   21:05  budgeted? What gives then? Was it the roads that gave? Was it the sidewalks it
   21:12  gave? or the alleys just get ignored again. So I think there needs to be more
   21:20  of a comprehensive plan to make sure that it's inclusive of everything. And
   21:26  that's all that I see if I could add.
   21:32  Um,
   21:33  [Music]
   21:36  so if you do the 4 in down with three inches of new binder, an inch of surface,
   21:45  uh, without adjusted inflation, it's 6.6 million. So the 9 to 10 million is paving the alleys as if like the roads
   21:54  are going all the way down starting all over. So if you do 463
   22:01  alleys, yeah, it's on the paper times 14,385, that's 6.6 million. Let's just say you did a
   22:09  10-year plan. You're about $666,000 a year. If you go to a 20-year
   22:16  plan, cut that in half, looking about $300,000, 330,000 a year that you'd be spending on alleys. That's if you
   22:25  replaced every alley every 20 years. And as we know, I mean, there's plenty of alleys
   22:32  that are 25, 30 years old that are just fine still. So, that's assuming, it's a big assumption that we actually need to
   22:39  replace them all. Um, if we also budget to if we
   22:48  provide, you know, Mike and the and the mayor some money in the budget for maintenance, maybe these alleys will last even longer, right? So, it's I
   22:57  don't sit here and blame anybody that's with the city now. I just, as Mr. Creech has said, I just don't
   23:05  know if it's been prioritized, different mayors, which is exactly why I'm bringing this up today.
   23:15  Hello, my name is Marcus Rgby. Um, good friend and neighbor of Blood Shelton for over 20 years, a neighbor for over 15 years. I live two houses down from him.
   23:24  My other neighbor John is here as well this evening. To start with the alley that we have now, which is Rock, uh, you can't
   23:32  drag a jack on it if you wanted to change your own tire out behind your garage. I have a garage and with a small
   23:40  car, I cannot pull into my garage with a small car, which means I I will never get a truck into my garage from the
   23:48  alley from the way it's built and where it's at in the distance between the alley and the garage. So, that means I got to do a multi-point turn with the steering axle, which disturbs gravel
   23:58  every single time. The moment you do a multi-point turn on gravel, it disturbs the gravel. That's every time I enter my
   24:06  garage. If I use it for parking, just for parking. Okay? So, if I want to instead of try to pull a truck into my garage, which will never go into my
   24:14  garage, and I jack it up, take the tire off, take it, get it fixed, bring it back. You cannot pull a jack across gravel. Go ahead and try it and see, you
   24:22  know, an older person try it. It's their own property. It's their own tools. It's their own facilities. They should be able to use the alley to jack a vehicle
   24:30  up, take the tire off, get it fixed, bring it back, and it be functional. The outlet that we had was at least 30 years old and did not need replaced. The outlet that we have is already not flat.
   24:41  The first big rain we get in one of these utility trucks that comes down and works on the utility poles in the back, the internet poles in the back that
   24:48  weigh two, three, four, five, six tons per truck. When they send two or three trucks down one alley made of gravel in
   24:56  the rain, how long you think that's going to last? It's going to last 30 years maybe with no cars driving down and
   25:03  it'll never last 30 years. So, uh you can go down our alley and see that it's not flatten out and it's just been done. So, it's going to be need to
   25:12  need to be done every single year at $2,500 per time. Even if it's half price just to maintain it, we can do the quick
   25:20  math on that real fast and it's already over $20,000 in 20 years just for the gravel that we have right now that was just put back. So, we've gotten for the
   25:29  tax dollars that some of us have been playing in the same location for the better part of of a century almost. Uh gotten less alley than we had before.
   25:38  Our our the the road in front of our homes was brick and that brick is is very close to a 100 years old. And in many places that brick didn't need
   25:46  touched. It was level. It was flat. The brick is not damaged. It's the high quality brick that was still there and still is underneath the rolled asphalt
   25:55  that we got in to to just pave right over it. They didn't go down eight inches and dig that brick up. They just paved right over it. So, when we had
   26:02  curbs, now we don't have curbs, which means, you know, there's less uh uh deviation or or uh separation from the
   26:11  road and the curb and the street. If you want to get to the sidewalk uh uh and uh 5050 idea behind the sidewalks and the
   26:18  alleys where it shows on the second page here where the uh uh the city may establish cost sharing programs with
   26:25  property owners were applicable. There are plenty of alleys as our uh fellow community member mentioned. Uh there are
   26:32  not residences that even exist on the block. The blocks are no longer full of
   26:39  houses with people who earn an income that can be able to have disposable income to contribute
   26:47  to the sidewalk, let alone the alley. My block, for example, we have one, two, we have four houses on one side right next
   26:55  to each other, two empty lots, and then a house on the end. That's on those houses are inhabited. So that's five out of seven or eight different lots on the
   27:04  one side of the block on the uh that'd be the west side of the block. On the east side of the block, there is one house that's inhabited. Is that correct?
   27:13  Your house, one livedin house on the other side of the block. So one house gets the
   27:20  opportunity to pay 50% of the cost of his sidewalk, his section of the sidewalk. Is that going to be 16 feet?
   27:26  Is that going to be the whole quarter of a block? Is that going to be his half of the block because he's the only guy living
   27:34  there? Should should we pay less because we have six people living on our side of the block and and his 50% is a much
   27:42  larger portion than ours. Is that everybody on the block combined? What if the block's got three three habited inhabited residences on it? And how many
   27:49  of those people are either disabled or retired or, you know, don't have two working incomes, full-time incomes. Back when the streets were put in 100 years
   27:57  ago, back when the alley was put in 100, well, our alley would be 30, 35 years ago, give or take. Uh, in the last 35
   28:05  years, you had two people contributing to that income. But when these houses were built, who paid for the sidewalks back then? Was that part of the
   28:13  mortgage? Is that part of the tax that's been paid for a hundred years now to get those sidewalks replaced? They ain't been replaced in 100 years because
   28:20  that's why there there are no sidewalks there. They're gone. There's nothing to fix. They need to be completely removed and redone. And somebody paid for them
   28:29  100 years ago. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't the person who had the mortgage on the new house. Mine was 1922, 1921. I
   28:36  think all of ours in that four house section are about the same age. Uh and at the end of the day, they were not responsible. I'm pretty sure they didn't pay for their own sidewalks when they
   28:43  had the houses, you know. So, uh, where' the hundred years of tax dollars go to maintain any sidewalk in any 20-year
   28:51  block or 25 year block? You know, we're already a quarter of the way to the 20 uh 20 22nd century. You know, you know,
   29:00  this is 25 years into the next century from now. And this has been a taxes are not new. They're not going away. Where
   29:07  to go? You know, who's paying for this stuff? We had a a street out front that lasted a hundred years and we now have rolled asphalt over it that might last
   29:15  20 if it's not chopped up every year for the next 20 years to get to what's underneath it, which still is brick underneath it. And the brick's not going
   29:24  anywhere either and it was flat enough to to pave right over at least. So, that lasted 100 years. The asphalt will not uh especially the one on the main street
   29:33  out front in the alley. It'll last 30 35 years. Uh, and it's a lot longer than rock. That's going to need done every
   29:41  year, especially in the the the higher traffic alleys, the ones in the certain areas of the neighborhood uh or the city that have more crime. If you ever
   29:50  watched or paid any attention to the the police uh pursuing uh individuals within our community, they're not avoiding the
   29:57  alleys and they're not avoiding and they're not driving down the alleys of 10 miles an hour. you know, you can see it one time and see that that's not
   30:05  going to do very good for long-term care of the alley when someone is speeding faster than the speed limit out front down the the rock gravel alley that we
   30:14  have now. So, not only are they completely unusable if you wanted to just jack a tire up in your own alley behind your own garage, but they're going to need to be redone. maintenance
   30:22  cost is going to exceed the original 20,000 estimate on the high