The idea has come up that the city’s road needs amount to “filling in a few potholes.” When one hears of a few potholes, one figures this is an aesthetic need or a mere nuisance.
Back in June of 2011, the firefighters’ union president Bobby Weist scoffed at the notion that money needed to be diverted from employee compensation to roads.
“I didn’t hear one dime of that $2.5 million going into retiree medical or anything else. I heard it going into roads and other things and infrastructure, nothing else,” Mr. Weist said at the time.
I find it interesting that the need to fill in a few potholes is balanced against the need for public safety, as though deteriorating road conditions would not produce a serious risk to public safety.
The public did not read the Nichols report. Most have no idea of the magnitude of the crisis or the exponential growth of the costs. We are not talking a small amount of money – we are talking about costs that would make the surface water project look like a drop in the bucket.
Page 10 of the Nichols report that came out in early February lays it out.
They write, “History has shown that it costs much less to maintain streets in good condition than to repair streets that have failed. By allowing pavements to deteriorate, streets that once cost $4/sy to slurry seal may soon cost $14-$27/sy to overlay and $61-$81/sy to reconstruct.”
This is the critical point: “In other words, delays in repairs can result in costs increasing as much as 20-fold.”
Or, graphically depicted, this is what it looks like.
How bad have things gotten? Back in 2011, the council made efforts to get funding levels up to $1 million a year. However, that is not nearly enough.
At the current level of funding, the Nichols report warns, “Based on an existing funding level of $20 million over 20 years, with approximately 3% allocated for preventive maintenance, the condition of the network will deteriorate to a PCI of 27 in twenty years and the deferred maintenance or unfunded backlog will dramatically increase more than ten-fold from $21.4 million in 2012 to $439.4 million in 2032.”
Instead, what the council needs is about $8 million per year of funding to get the city’s road conditions from the current PCI 62, which is a poor rating, up to PCI 70 which is the city’s more traditional rating.
As we noted earlier this week, the Vanguard has been warning the Davis community that the fiscal condition is far worse than most people have been led to believe. At times, citing our unfunded liabilities in retiree health and pensions, we have suggested that Davis might not be far from bankruptcy.
We now believe that assessment was wrong. While the unfunded liabilities in both retiree health and pensions are concerning, and need to be addressed through the bargaining process, they are manageable.
Unlike other cities, Davis is not saddled with huge amounts of debt. It has managed the fiscal crisis not by digging a deeper debt hole, but rather by failing to spend money that it needed to spend but did not have.
However, while Davis does not face imminent bankruptcy, it faces another fiscal crisis that might be just as bad. Because what Davis has done is balance the budget by failing to invest in critical needs. For years, they assigned capital improvement projects into the unmet needs category.
What we have are basically a series of deferred maintenance costs, and this year we learned just how much maintenance has accrued for Davis. In roadways alone, we must pay at least $8 million a year (more than eight times what we are paying now) to keep roadways from becoming critical, with more than $140 million in backlog.
In essence, what the council would do, in order to show a balanced budget, is that they would take any road maintenance and other infrastructure needs and stick it into a category that they called “unmet needs.” Back in 2007 and 2008, we were talking about $13 million.
But the problem that we faced back then, aside from the collapsing economy and flagging revenue, is that not paying $13 million in 2007 means that we won’t pay just slightly more in 2013, but rather a huge amount more.
To put this into terms that the public can appreciate, the best strategy for dealing with potholes is to not simply fill the potholes. But we have also moved well beyond potholes here – we have gotten to the point where a large number of streets not only are well overdue for repairs, but they are actually failing.
While it takes relatively little to treat these problems in the early stages, rebuilding the roadway itself is going to be hugely expensive and the more it declines, the more the city will have to spend.
The council awoke to this issue back in 2011. In early February of this year, Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk noted the June 2011 3-2 budget vote that Joe Krovoza, Rochelle Swanson and he took.
“We knew at the time it was a very difficult vote to basically move $1 million into the roads and $200,000 into the bike paths,” he said. “That was a difficult vote and we knew at the time… that that really wasn’t going to solve the problem by any means.”
“But seeing this report shows you how really a drop in the bucket it really is,” he said. “It’s very daunting and sobering to realize and think about where we’re going to find this $150 million.”
Mayor Pro Tem Wolk would add, “A bandaid solution is just not viable. The roads only get more expensive.”
“Infrastructure is so critical to our community, this is just something that we are going to have to take,” he said. “The way we’re proceeding, it’s clear it’s not viable.”
That is the reality that the council will face, and the context of the fire staffing and other cuts the council will have to consider, as they try to get toward the $8 million mark before they get run over by $439 million in costs.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]To put this into terms that the public can appreciate, the best strategy for dealing with potholes is to simply fill the potholes. [/quote]”Potholes” are much more serious than you think. If desired, I can elaborate with the assistance of an engineer who has over 25 years of dealing with pavement management. A pothole is kinda like a lesion, that you don’t think is too bad, but it can often indicate that there is “cancer” beneath. Filling potholes IS NOT pavement management, any more than applying a topical cream to a cancerous lesion is a “cure”. A pothole is generally an indication that a ‘base failure’ has occurred. The basic problem is that water has gotten into the sub-base (soil), and weakened it. Filling potholes is a good “stop-gap” measure to prevent the cancer from spreading, but it is still there. Prevention (help me, medwoman on this!) is almost always better than more serios ‘treatment’.
That was the point I was trying to make, but didn’t apparently – in addition to leaving out a “not” as is in – is to “not simply fill the potholes.
David, as dire a picture as you have managed to describe, the failing infrastructure challenge is significantly worse. The $8M/year that you cite, for 19 consecutive years by the way, presumes that we invest just under $23M this year. The $24 million is made-up of $21.4M for roads and $1.34M for bike paths (see Nichols report pages 12 & 13). And this doesn’t even cover city-owned parking lots and driveways.
-Michael Bisch
hpierce
Only one quibble with a spot on post. Prevention is always better than treatment .
So is NOE going to file a referendum against repairing the roads and bike paths claiming it’s all a developer-driven scheme to promote peripheral growth? 🙂
-Michael Bisch
DG said: “But we have also moved well beyond potholes here – we have gotten to the point where a large number of streets not only are well overdue for repairs, but they are actually failing. “
OK, I know, I know, I’m being stubborn. Can someone give me examples of streets (since there are a “large number” of them) that are actually failing so I can go (on my bike of course) to see what that looks like? I live in East Davis so if there are some over hear then I won’t have to go as far. Thanks.
Donna:
This is almost three year old data now, but my guess is that we only have more than we did in 2010.
Failing Streets ([url]https://davisvanguard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3490:davis-street-condition-deteriorating-a-street-level-view&catid=58:budgetfiscal&Itemid=79[/url])
The AAA released a study a few years ago that showed the cost to the average taxpayer to properly maintain all our roads (in other words, tax ourselves) was less than the cost to the average taxpayer to pay for the vehicle damage caused by potholes as they hammered our tires, wheels, and suspension components.
Donna… Bill Marshall, who has worked for years in pavement management, is willing to walk you thru sites in E Davis to show you signs of pavement distress and possible remediation. Feel free to contact via me @ hortensepierce@yahoo.com
stracy, I am not advocating leaving pot holes, but the article makes the case that filling them in is worthless.
hpierce, I want to do some exploring first and then perhaps meet with Bill Marshall, it is very nice of him to offer his time. So I’ll keep your e-mail and let you know after I’ve had a chance to follow up. Thanks!
If we are currently spending $1 million/yr on roads and need to spend $8 million just to maintain the current status, that is one very large sales tax and/or parcel tax. I think Measure E only raised $3.2 million/yr for the schools and that was a pretty significant $204/parcel/yr.
There is no way the CC can save anything close to that by squeezing labor costs. If they get $1 million in annual labor savings I will be amazed. To me this is looking more and more like a major parcel tax AND a sales tax increase.
The city projected to save about $4 million through the collective bargaining process. The three contracts signed in December produce about $2.3 in savings by 2015.
The city also expects to save about $4 via their restructuring.
The bad news however is that this was just to deal with retiree health and unfunded liabilities.
The city manager told me that he has a plan to get $15 to $30 million immediately for roads, he’ll present it in April, we’ll have to see.
I’m reluctant to go the revenue route until we have dealt with the structural problems in the system, but I think you are right that we have little choice.
“stracy, I am not advocating leaving pot holes, but the article makes the case that filling them in is worthless.”
I think the point is filling them leaves the structural issue and ultimately will leave another, bigger pothole. So you have to repair the whole area around it, dig it up and relay the asphalt. I’m no expert on this, hpierce probably can explain a lot better.
Maybe I didn’t state that clearly enough: The AAA’s point was that we should all be willing to pay to have our roads properly maintained, because repairing the damage to our vehicles costs us more than the road maintenance would cost.