City announces summer paving plans
May 5—With summer rapidly approaching, the City of Meridian's paving crews are planning to make the most of the warmer temperatures to pave city streets.
In a meeting Tuesday, Assistant Public Works Director Mike Van Zandt told the City Council more than 8.5 miles of road were included on the city's list for in-house paving.
In recent weeks, Van Zandt said city crews have paved the approaches on a recently replaced bridge on Royal Road, performed grading work out at the Meridian Public Safety Training Facility on Sand Flat Road, patched areas along Poplar Springs Drive and other roads and paved parts of 39th and 46th streets.
Additionally, crews did some paving near Parkview Elementary School at the request of Meridian Public School District, Van Zandt said.
"The school district will reimburse us for the asphalt," he said.
As dry weather and warmer temperatures prevail, Van Zandt said city crews are looking to pave near 35th Avenue and 40th Street. There is a group of about seven streets in that vicinity that the city plans to pave.
Public Works Director David Hodge has previously told the City Council his department looks for clusters of streets that can all be paved at once. There is loading and unloading the heavy equipment, setting up signage, and other work that has to be done prior to paving, he said, and that all costs money.
Maximizing the number of streets that can be paved while minimizing the number of times equipment needs to be relocated helps cut unnecessary costs and frees up more taxpayer dollars to go toward fixing the streets.
Once done with the cluster of streets, Van Zandt said the in-house paving crew plans to move to the Colonial Acres subdivision and then on to Mohawk and Cherokee roads in the second phase of the Broadmoor subdivision.
From there, Van Zandt said crews will move on to several roads in and around the Briarwood and Country Estates subdivisions before heading south to hit neighborhoods and subdivisions along Highway 39 and Newell Road.
"I've got a list that, it's pretty aggressive," he said. "I don't know if we'll accomplish it, but we intend to get after it and accomplish whatever we can."
Much of the focus for in-house paving is on smaller residential streets that don't see much traffic. While those streets aren't as attractive to contractors due to the short length and less profitability, they are ideal for the city's paving crew that is not equipped to handle the large thoroughfares such as 8th Street or North Hills Street.
"That's one of the primary reasons why we do this in-house work," Van Zandt said. "It's because we will commit to doing the work that we will never hire a contractor to come in and do."
Contact Thomas Howard on Twitter @tmhoward
