River Bend Times

Now that they have evaluated the condition of city streets, the Maquoketa Public Works Committee presented their 10-year street improvement plan to the council for approval during the March council meeting.

Mike Shimkus, lead engineer from WHKS, presented the report to the council to outline a schedule of street improvement plans in the community, and the council approved the plan.

“At the end of the day, it does boil down in many ways to dollars and cents,” Shimkus said at the March 20 council meeting. “We do know the classic adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So how does that relate to the maintenance and the updating of infrastructure in a community?”

He showed a graph representing a pavement management system that identifies the points where maintenance or minor rehabilitation is going to prevent the continued and accelerated degradation of city streets that would then cost significantly more money to fix, he said.

His team was asked to put together a summary and find a data-driven method to determine the condition of all the streets in Maquoketa’s jurisdiction, and then build out a schedule and plan for improvements and reconstructions as necessary. This should help the city plan out some of their next big projects and will allow the council to fund and prepare for big street projects before they reach end-of-life condition.

Shimkus explained the life expectancy timeline of a road. A new road can go up to 10-12 years before the city would have to look at maintenance and repairs. These early problems are often inexpensive, easy fixes – some crack sealing, pothole fills and basic repairs. During the five years after that 12-year mark, the road condition quickly deteriorates, doubling the cost of repair every three years. Some roads do, and will, need to be totally replaced due to age and quality, Shimkus said.

A 10-year improvement plan represents an adequate cycle of repairs that would keep the streets in as good a condition as possible within an achievable price point. The majority of Maquoketa’s streets are currently rated as “Fair Condition,” where they are on the edge of needing repairs or needing reconstruction.

The team suggested about 7.5 miles of total reconstruction for the city, and ranked all the projects in terms of priority, encouraging public works to do maintenance on the mid-level streets when they found the time and money.

Council approved the plan and thanked the team for creating it.