In his eight months as city manager, Peter Zanoni has heard it too many times to count: the city's residential streets are a mess.
Riddled with potholes and cracks, more than half of the city's 835 miles of neighborhood roadways are in poor condition, according to the city documents.
It isn't because the city hasn't been working to fix the streets.
It's because city employees were doing it the wrong way.
Zanoni isn't okay with this. He has already taken a crucial step to change it.
Zanoni revamped the department by hiring Richard Martinez as its director.
Martinez, who started Jan. 21, has 30 years of experience in street operations in San Antonio and Fort Worth.
The previous director, Albert Quintanilla, was bumped to assistant director but resigned from the city on Wednesday, effective immediately.
Quintanilla, who worked for the city for 10 months, is an exceptional engineer, Zanoni said, but mostly had experience with building highways and rural roads. He was the wrong man for the job.
What are the problems?
"We have a personnel problem," Zanoni said. "We need to get the right leaders in place and begin to rebuild the team."
More than 200,000 potholes were fixed by the city in 2019. But, Zanoni said, city employees haven't been repairing them correctly for years.
Now, potholes aren’t prepped before they’re filled with a cold asphalt mix that is easily washed away by the rain, Zanoni said.
Martinez explained that potholes should be be squared off and filled with a hot mixture that becomes like concrete.
"People say (we) pave the potholes, and (they) come right back," Zanoni said. "They will come right back."
The Public Works and Street Operations Department's employees lack training and the proper tools to fix the potholes the right way. They also have been using the wrong technique to seal streets.
The city departments don't own street sweeping equipment to remove debris and trash from residential streets. That would help to keep grass from growing on the roadway and damaging it.
"Today, they don't know how to perform some of the basic street functions," Zanoni said.
The rocks the department puts down to overlay a street after constructing it often fly up and hit drivers' windshields because technique for rural roads was being used.
And that's not all.
Right now, the city isn't reconstructing any residential streets. In fact, work hasn't started on planned projects for fiscal year 2019 or 2020.
"We're behind on residential street construction (because) the staff ... let the business fall apart," Zanoni said.
How will Martinez address the issues?
Already in his first week on the job, Martinez has started working to implement pothole repair training for his employees. He expects the training to begin within a month.
This is one of many changes to come to the department:
- Building stronger partnerships with Nueces County, Texas Department of Transportation and local private sector industrial equipment distributors to include Holt, Caterpillar and Doggett│John Deere;
- Balancing street work between contractors and city crews;
- Using street applications and materials that are designed for an urban setting ;
- Providing city staff with more street maintenance training;
- Replacing outdated equipment and repairing non-working equipment;
- Creating a maintenance plan for concrete streets;
- Complete annual street preventive maintenance in a timely manner;
- Developing a street sweeping program;
- And consolidating the storm water functions within the Public Works and Street Operations Department.
"Training needs to go on for years, and hadn't been going on for years," Martinez said. "We have to start again and retrain our personnel and get the proper equipment so we can accomplish those goals."
Corpus Christi's residential streets are below the national standard. Martinez is conducting a condition assessment of the entire street network so he knows which streets need work the most.
He's also working to put together a five-year street infrastructure management plan that will go before City Council.
Martinez needs to fill a nearly 20 percent vacancy in the department and assess what positions should be added. He also wants to add an analytics team that would manage data to keep street maintenance and conditions on track.
In regard to maintenance, residential streets often fall behind busy arterial streets and low- to moderate-capacity "collectors," which provide access to residential streets, Martinez said.
Residential street maintenance needs to be a strong priority, he said. That's so they don't fall past the point of repair and have to be completely reconstructed.
What would it take to fix all residential streets?
The city would have to spend $71 million annually for 60 years to properly maintain and replace residential streets, the city's Ad Hoc Residential Street Infrastructure Committee determined in 2016.
If the city had followed that plan, it would have totaled $4.26 billion in spending by 2076.
Martinez is working with city staff and council to determine how much it would cost and how long it would take to get residential streets to an acceptable level.
The 2019 city budget allocated about $15.3 million for residential street repairs, and construction was slated to begin last October. It's now planned to start in March.
The Residential Street Rebuild Program is part of the 2020 city budget and has about $32 million allocated to it. Reconstruction and rehabilitation is slated to begin in May.
How does the city handle streets?
The Public Works and Street Operations Department is supposed to take care of all residential street reconstruction and all street maintenance in most cases.
However, the Engineering Department will rebuild seven of Corpus Christi's "worst" residential streets. Work was supposed to start in October, but has been delayed.
The Engineering Department is essentially over reconstruction of busy arterial and collector streets.
Now, most street reconstruction is contracted out by the city and done by private companies. This is more expensive and not a proper use of city resources, Zanoni said.
With training and purchasing the right equipment, Martinez and Zanoni want to bring a lot of jobs in house.
"We clearly lack the capability to perform a lot of in-house work," Zanoni said. "A lot of our equipment Is broken, outdated or the operator doesn't know how to use it."
As an example, Zanoni said, the city owns an asphalt laydown paver, but it hasn't been used in years because city employees don't know how.
One of the first major changes Zanoni made as city manager was to request more than double the funding for streets — $128 million — in the 2020 budget.
Martinez plans to continue having high funding for residential streets in future budgets.
"It took a couple months to figure it out and break the code," Zanoni said. "The change in being able to improve our streets (lies) with Richard."
Kathryn Cargo follows business openings and developments while reporting on impacts of the city government’s decisions. See our subscription options and special offers at Caller.com/subscribe
Related coverage
More: The city of Corpus Christi blends public works and street operations, taps new director
More: City of Corpus Christi moves forward with $32 million residential street rebuild program
More: What will it take to fix up Corpus Christi's most dilapidated streets?
"street" - Google News
January 25, 2020 at 08:00PM
https://ift.tt/310AMqw
Why Corpus Christi's residential streets are falling apart and what is being done about it - Corpus Christi Caller-Times
"street" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Ql4mmJ
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment