The city faces a monumental task of figuring out how to deal with an impending road pavement crisis, within the current limitations of the budget. In addition to a discussion of the budget this week, the council will receive a presentation, along with an action plan, on pavement management.
The current budget only calls for $2.3 million to put toward street maintenance, and $1 million of that is the money budgeted from last year that was carried over from last year.
On February 5, the council received the Pavement Management Report prepared for the City by Nichols Consulting Engineers. Council needs to bridge “the funding gap between the current baseline budget for pavement maintenance and the budget it would take to halt the steady deterioration of our average pavement conditions and reach a sustainable level acceptable to the community.”
The report found that if the city council did not immediately infuse tens of millions into road maintenance and spend $150 million, they would be facing a $444 million deferred maintenance hole.
“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,” Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk said at the time. “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.”
Past Funding – How did we get into this hole?
Back in February, in response to a Vanguard column, former Councilmember Stephen Souza asked, “Could you who know all of the story please tell me where transportation dollars came from before the great economic recession of 2008? Also, Before June of last year when was the last Federal Transportation bill?”
But the suggestion that this was merely a problem caused by the loss of state and federal funding misstates the historical nature of transportation funding.
From 2000-01 until last fiscal year, a span of 12 fiscal years, the city spent just $10.6 million on roads. That comes to about $890,000 a year. To put that figure into perspective, we spend nearly as much on fire in one year as we did on roads over the last 12.
Just over half that money would come through the State and Federal Grant Fund. But even in the best days, at least over the period of time covered in this analysis, the city was getting sporadic contributions, with as much as $1.7 million in 2001-02 and several years of nothing.
The average of that time was $459,000 – far less than the city should have relied on for funding for road maintenance.
For seven of the 12 years, the city received some amount of State Transportation funds, but that was a total of $1.86 million over the 12-year period.
The city would also receive essentially one-time money through Prop 1B and the Stimulus plan.
Finally, over that period of time, the city only used $577,862 from its general fund, and $400,000 of that came in 2004-05, the year after the city received no money from the state or federal government.
There should have been a warning here, that state and federal funding was sporadic and unreliable.
By 2009, Interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke was warning the city of the impending crisis.
At that time, it was funded at the $810,000 baseline level. However, that funding level was insufficient and it was reported that current funding would lead to the deterioration of street conditions.
At that time, the funding to address the backlog would require an increase to $2.8 million per year and full funding, to maintain the desired pavement index, deemed to be in excess of $3 million per year.
What did the council do about this? Nothing, and Bob Clarke had virtually the same report in 2010 and even 2011.
What changed? In the Spring of 2011, I was invited to meet with Mayor Joe Krovoza and Mayor Pro Tem Rochelle Swanson. It was a new council, with Dan Wolk recently appointed to replace Don Saylor.
At that time, Paul Navazio, the acting city manager, had put forth a budget that did not address any of the critical retirement issues. And, in fact, there was absolutely zero funding in that budget for road repair.
Led by Mayor Joe Krovoza and Mayor Pro Tem at that time, Rochelle Swanson, the council passed by a 3-2 vote with Dan Wolk joining the majority, a budget that would reduce employee compensation by $2.5 million, and $1 million of that would go to road maintenance.
Paul Navazio would never implement the $2.5 million in cuts and by the time Steve Pinkerton had his feet settled after the September 6 meeting and the water vote, it was too late for road maintenance in the next spring.
Council continued the $1 million into the next budget. But, as we know, that amount is insufficient to address the backlog.
Current Proposal
“While the Council discussion began with a focus on the fiscal needs of pavement maintenance, it expanded to the broader context of a sustainable maintenance program for all transportation infrastructure,” Interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke writes. “The current budget for all Transportation operations and maintenance functions, excluding funds provided to the three Transit service providers, totals approximately $7.8 million with 50% of that ($3.9million) allocated to pavement maintenance.”
While there is $3 million budgeted for contract services, “The current budget for all Transportation operations and maintenance functions, excluding funds provided to the three Transit service providers, totals approximately $7.8 million with 50% of that ($3.9million) allocated to pavement maintenance.”
This is due to the fact that neither the firefighters nor DCEA have taken their contract concessions, costing the city over $1 million thus far.
Most of these funds will be used to support current grants and developer-funded projects with pavement maintenance components, such as: First Street from B to G Streets, Fifth Street from A to L Streets, Eighth Street from F to J Streets, Drexel Drive from J to L Streets and the Drummond/Chiles/Cowell traffic circle.
Mr. Clarke adds, “Because the of the significant number of grant funded projects for roadways this year and the need for local funds to deliver them, staff does not believe we will have sufficient remaining funds to perform a cost effective road maintenance project this year.”
The current projections assume an average inflation rate of 8% for paving asphalt. Bob Clarke notes that this rate is much higher than revenue is forecast to grow over the same period. This leads to the ever-widening gap between the costs and our ability to pay for them.
While the council could assume a more conservative growth estimate over the next two decades, Mr. Clarke warns, “The consequences of underestimation will only lead to more challenges in the future. While staff will continue to monitor the cost of paving asphalt and adjust the model assumptions in an ongoing manner, assuming a lower rate now only results in a slightly lower future cost to maintain our pavement and does not solve the funding gap by itself.”
Bob Clarke presents five proposals:
Scenario 1 – Maintain current funding levels of $1M for roads and $200,000 for paths.
Scenario 2 – Increase funding levels to obtain an average PCI of 70 for roads.
Scenario 3 – Increase funding levels to maintain the backlog at current levels.
Scenario 4 – Provide an infusion of $25M over the first two years and increase funding to maintain an average PCI of 68 for roads and paths.
Scenario 5 – Provide an infusion of $25M over the first two years and maintain a steady funding level of $3M a year thereafter.
He writes, “With Scenarios 4 and 5, in recognition of the potentially unobtainable fiscal needs of the earlier Scenarios and following discussion with UCD and other pavement experts, staff also revised the decision tree logic for pavement maintenance by assuming a higher threshold before complete pavement reconstruction and major overlays were utilized and increased the use of preventative treatments including, crack sealing and seal treatments.”
Staff believes that the city should focus on two factors the city has control over – pavement maintenance treatments and the PCI goal.
Critical to their plan is setting the goal for the average PCI which is currently 62, and needs to end up near 70, depending on where council wants it.
Council would then prioritize key streets that have high volumes of traffic, or serve key areas like commercial zones, parks, schools and public facilities.
Council should use a lower PCI goal for local residential streets, focusing the maintenance strategy on safety and low cost treatments rather than overlays and reconstruction.
Furthermore, staff recommends, “Employ a maintenance strategy that prioritizes keeping as many of the streets currently in good condition from deteriorating to a poor condition and only invest significant funds to address existing streets in poor shape when overall public safety cannot longer be addressed with minor patch paving and other low cost treatments.”
One additional goal is to not allow new roads or enhanced corridors to implement improvements that create future higher pavement costs for the city unless specific funds are identified for this purpose.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
i look forward to reading how souza responds to this. the idea that something as important as road repair could be financed exclusively by federal and state grants was a fools errand that has put us in fiscal peril.
Clearly this kind of money is simply not available and is not going to appear. So we need to prioritize to the max and get the best price for the jobs that really NEED doing. I do not agree with what is considered a required level of road quality, I find it totally overblown. I do not think a whole new layer is needed whenever there are a few cracks, a hole or a little depression here and there and I have looked around to see what is being considered a problem. If those issues are not reparable with current methods, new repair methods should be sought, rather than constantly adding layer upon layer.
” I do not agree with what is considered a required level of road quality, I find it totally overblown.”
I don’t know what you believe is required, but the city is looking to take its PSI from 62 to 70, that won’t require completely new layers unless there is structural damage to the road.
League of California Cities on California city transportation Infrastructure needs.
[url]http://www.cacities.org/UploadedFiles/LeagueInternet/44/44403293-580e-4625-8496-fd4f3cb25ef5.pdf[/url]
Imagine for a second that in 2005, as a new councilman, after the state and feds failed to fund roads that you would have taken $1 million of the half-cent sales tax that was supposed to go for things of this sort and instead of giving it to the firefighters, you would have created a permanent funding sources for road maintenance. now maybe, you would had to have increased it somewhat, but spending an average of $1.8 million and no less than one million over the last decade might have forestalled this crisis that you left for future councils – don’t you think Souza? Or are you just content to post links because you don’t want to argue the facts?
Donna: Follow up: “The City has utilized crack seals and surface treatments as a means of preventive maintenance when the pavements are in “fair” condition or above. When the pavement condition deteriorates further, overlays and reconstruction have been performed. Base repairs are commonly used as preparation prior to overlays.”
This should give you a sense as to when they do what, and the cost per square foot…
[img]images/stories/pavement-condition.png[/img]
Davis Progressive has go it right! And, maybe it’s time for the Budget and Finance Commission and the City Council to adopt Participatory Budgeting as a tool that gives authority to the citizens of Davis to participate directly in the “construction” of city budgets and setting priorities through a process of neighborhood and city-wide discussions and negotiations. I bet if this process had been in place the past years, fund would not have been spent on different and essential priorities and would have represented the will of the people and not the political priorities of City Council members. Would the community have agreed to creating the huge unfunded liabilities for the police and firefights; would road maintenance have been neglected; would $6 and now $10 million have been spent on a water project before there was any vote what-so-ever of the people?
Participatory budgeting is practiced in cities of very large and smaller populations worldwide and is being adopted in the US with great success.
If Davis is so “progressive,” why not here? It’s time to change how the equation.
In response to Stephen’s post, the same company evaluated Davis’ situation, Nichols Consulting…
They write: ““Deferred maintenance” or “Unfunded backlog” consists of pavement maintenance that is needed, but cannot be performed due to lack of funding. These terms are often used interchangeably. [b]Shrinking budgets have forced many cities and counties to defer much-needed road maintenance.[/b] By deferring maintenance, not only does the frequency of citizens’ complaints about the condition of the network increase, [u][b]but the cost to repair these streets rises as well[/b][/u].”
So here is the rub. Yes, many cities and counties have been forced to defer maintenance, but by doing so the cost to repair those streets rises as well.
So in 2009, Bob Clarke suggested we could get a handle on the problem by spending $3 million a year, now the new report increases that to $7 or $8 million a year after a huge influx of money.
So why did the council not act sooner? It’s complicated and many other communities made the same mistake, but it’s costly and it’s going to cripple our ability to have a sustainable budget into the future.