The village of Lake Zurich aims to ramp up annual spending on its road resurfacing program to $2 million, starting with the upcoming fiscal year.
At the Board of Trustees’ March 2 meeting, village engineer Manhard Consulting recommended village officials up the ante on spending in this area to maintain the conditions of its residential, collector, arterial and industrial roads.
The suggestion was born out of the $75,000 contract the entered into by the village last summer, which had the engineer developing a pavement management plan that would help guide the village’s decisions on street improvements.
“The goal of this report is to establish an effective and consistent maintenance and repair program,” said Manhard Consulting project manager Pete Stoehr.
Using an analytical tool called PAVER 7.0, Manhard found that the 80 miles of roadways the village maintained had a Pavement Condition Index of 73, which translated to “good condition.”
About 54 percent of the village’s streets by area were rated “good” or better. About 28 percent of the roads were “satisfactory” and 18 percent were “poor” or below.
The engineer recommended that the village aim to maintain the roads’ condition at the same level.
Sinking $2 million into major repairs and $200,000 toward preventative maintenance annually would preserve existing conditions.
The village’s pavement budget for fiscal year 2014-15 has the village spending $1.5 million on major repairs and $20,000 on preventative maintenance. However, should the village budget this way for the next ten years, the quality of its roads would drop to “satisfactory.”
When the village’s draft budget is finished later in March, Village Manager Jason Slowinski said that officials could then talk more about how to accommodate Manhard’s recommendations.
“That’s going to be our challenge going forward–where we commit those resources and whether it’s to maintain our road network or our other needs that we have,” Slowinski said.
Village Mayor Tom Poynton noted that the process could be made more difficult by Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal to halve municipalities’ share of the state income taxes — which would translate to a $1 million hole for Lake Zurich.
In the five-year maintenance plan Manhard laid out, the village would reconstruct the roads within the Lake Zurich Manor and Ancient Oaks subdivisions this year; move on to the Orchards subdivision and Mossley Hill Estates in 2016; work on the roads within Sparrow Ridge in 2017; Old Rand Road, Main Street and Grand Avenue in 2018; and the Bristol Trail subdivision in 2019.
Laura Pavin is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
