Seymour officials said they hope to resurface portions of 12 city streets this year as part of a new road maintenance plan.
The idea is to fix small problems to keep them from becoming big problems, city engineer Nathan Frey said.
“Last year, we took a more extensive look at the conditions of our roads and the funding available to maintain them and realized that doing what we have in the past won’t work moving forward,” he said.
Frey compared road maintenance to buying a new car.
“You can get by without changing the oil for quite some time, and that approach saves you money in the short term,” he said. “However, if you want that car to last, the oil has to be changed.”
Areas with structural failures in the road, or potholes, will be patched, and then the roads will be paved over with 1½ inches of new asphalt.
Streets listed first on the schedule for repaving include:
Ninth Street from Elm Street to Shields Avenue
Pine Street from Ninth Street to 10th Street
10th Street from Pine Street to the dead end
Mill Street from Fourth Street to Seventh Street
O’Brien Street from Reliance Avenue to Seventh Street and from Second Street to Fourth Street
G Avenue from Airport Road to Second Avenue; E Avenue from Airport Road to C Avenue, and C Avenue from D Avenue to G Avenue, all in Freeman Field Industrial Park
Stevens Way from U.S. 50 to the entrance of Circle K
County Road 1000E from Killion Avenue to the CSX railroad crossing
Beech Street from McDonald Street to Oak Street
Frey said the road segments were chosen based on their condition.
“These roads are in poor enough condition that they need more work done than just crack sealing or a surface seal, but they aren’t bad enough that they need rebuilt,” he said.
The work is expected to cost $400,000 to $600,000 total, Frey added. It will be funded through several sources, including the Seymour Redevelopment Commission and local road funds. He said if that isn’t enough, the city could borrow money through a bond issue to cover the rest.
Frey said the project is scheduled to be completed by Nov. 1.
The resurfacing work is just a part of the city’s overall road maintenance improvement plan, which includes other preventive measures, such as crack sealing and filling, and using rejuvenaters and surface sealers, Frey added.
He said only about a dozen cities in Indiana have comprehensive road maintenance improvement plans in place, including Franklin, Avon and Jasper.
In the past, the city has resurfaced roads or allowed them to deteriorate until the point they need to be rebuilt, Frey said. He listed West Second Street, which will be rebuilt and widened in the coming months, as an example.
With the rise in the price of asphalt and other materials over the past 15 years, the city no longer has the money to keep up with the cost and must change the way it approaches road maintenance, he said.
“The city needs to invest in these different types of road treatments to maintain our infrastructure in the least expensive way possible for the taxpayer,” Frey said. “That is our goal.”
He said more roads will be scheduled for resurfacing next year.
“Our crews will be out crack sealing some of the better roads,” he said. “We will also be completing other additional preventative maintenance work, too.”