A portion of Baggerman Crescent is the focus this year of the District of Houston’s road maintenance program which began July 5.
A crew from LB Paving Ltd. will take up a layer of asphalt and replace it with a new one in a technique called mill and fill at a cost of $194,805, just shy of the $200,000 the District of Houston sets aside each year for road repairs.
The Baggerman Crescent job is part a $513,403.85 contract let to LB Paving which was the only contractor interested in taking on the District’s complete road and sidewalk maintenance and repair program this year.
Three sections of Omineca Crescent will be milled and filled and there will be five repair patches along North Nadina and West Third.
A project begun on Hagman Crescent in 2018 to replace curbs gutters and sidewalks will be completed this year at a cost of $87,216.40.
A minor project on Elliott involving asphalt repair and repairing a catch basin is worth $10,771.06, money for which was budgeted last year but not spent.
Repaving the section of Hagman that was dug up the end of May to replace failed sections of two sewer lines is costing $9,234.
The $513,403.85 costing as provided by LB Paving is $14,684 of what the District had budgeted for the work and that shorfall is being made up by using $14,684 from the annual federal gas tax rebate the District receives each year.
LB Paving, a subsidiary of Terus Construction, was the only contractor to the District’s request for an expression of interest. Canyon Contracting, another Terus subsidiary, was the contractor for the District’s 9th Street improvement project.
The selection of Baggerman as this year’s focus for the District’s road maintenance program follows in line with recommendations made through a consultant’s 2018 report which examined the state of the District’s road network.
“Baggerman Crescent and Omineca Crescent were identified for repair priority over others due to the condition of the pavement, in addition to the noted poor condition of sections of these roads as identified in the 2018 Road Asset Management Program,” said District of Houston chief administrative officer Gerald Pinchbeck.
“While the driveable surface is still useable, the ‘alligator’ cracking that is present throughout the subdivision poses a major risk to the condition of the subgrade and base road structures due to allowing for more water to infiltrate these layers and exacerbate the damage done by the freeze-thaw cycle. Unfortunately, this means that roads with other surface defects had to be deferred,” he said.
The $200,000 the District sets aside each year for road repairs falls short of the $1.722 million the 2018 consultant’s report recommended as what’s needed each year.
In all, the District has 43.5 kilometres within its boundaries and those kilometres are worth $67.16 million.
Over the course of the District’s current five-year financial plan, the annual amount dedicated to road maintenace is to increase by $20,000 a year beginning next year, ending at $280,000 in 2025.
And based on the District’s 10-year capital plan forecast, the total spending comes to $2.9 million. A portion of that amount comes from the annual federal gas tax rebate provided to the District.
