Pavement Management Plan for next fiscal year approved by City

Apr. 9—The Pavement Management Plan for fiscal year 2025 for Stillwater has been approved by the Transportation Projects Advisory Committee and the City Council, even though some FY 2024, and previous year pavement management plans, are not yet underway for construction, nor completed, and according to estimated budgets, will be underfunded.

The Pavement Management Plan for FY 2025 is estimated to cost $10 million to be paid for by funds of the 2022 Transportation Sales Tax, which funds the entire Pavement Management Program.

"They are projected by the end of fiscal year 24 to accumulate approximately $10 million," said Travis Small, engineering manager for the City of Stillwater.

That would seem to make FY 25 projects almost a wash, but the City is behind on at least three projects for FY 2024 and under-funded for at least two that Small discussed.

"A diamond grinding and patching project, which is on Hall of Fame, McElroy and Manning we anticipate, based on the estimated costs, this will need an additional one million to go to construction," he said.

"At Knoblock and Fourth, this is a design we are currently working on with a consultant ... (and) anticipate $6.5 million for this project that doesn't cover everything for construction on this project."

It is unlikely construction will begin on at least two of those projects within the FY 24 program, Small said, and in addition, "we do realize funds are needed for those."

"We're talking about projects that are still Pavement Management from (years) '21, '22, '23 that are still on the books that we're still working to get finished up," Mayor Will Joyce said. "I know we increased our funding, we doubled our funding a couple years ago."

The group responsible for overseeing the PMP is the TPAC, which was formed after voters agreed to increase once-existing transportation tax of 1/2% and replace it with a 2022 Transportation Sales Tax of 1% for a 10-year period, starting July 1, 2022 and ending June 30, 2032, with funds to be used exclusively for transportation and infrastructure projects and improvements in Stillwater.

The duties of the TPAC are to advise the City Council regarding projects for proposed funding from revenues generated by the 2022 Transportation Sales Tax.

The members primarily review projects and submit recommendations to the City regarding the proposed sequence or timing of starting, continuing and completing transportation projects for which the sales tax funds are used. Before projects go to the City Council to be approved, TPAC must approve them first.

The FY 24 projects, that the City is behind and underfunded on, and the new FY 25 projects scheduled for next year, have all been approved by TPAC and by the City Council.

"Do you feel like we're actually going to get these projects into production and get ourselves back in line where we're not three years behind on finishing up projects from previous fiscal years," Joyce asked.

"What do we need to do to get our completion rate up a little faster so we can get through some of this? It's nice to have some money to be able to spend on these projects, but how are we able to actually do this quicker?" Joyce said.

"Staff has been looking at this as an issue," Small said. "Certainly previous projects that were identified — those are not going by the wayside. Those are definitely projects that we are working on to move forward to try to get up to the top of the list so that we can go to construction."

Small said the City staff working on the Pavement Management Program is focusing on using engineering staff outside of the City that can help "us push these projects along" and internal staff is going to try to focus a lot on those projects that have lingered.

"If they've been named, we're going to address them," Small said.

Joyce continued to express concern for the future of roadways — the maintenance, construction or reconstruction — and how the Pavements Management Programs will dovetail into other overall roads and projects construction.

"With the Sixth Street reconstruction or widening project coming eventually, I know we've already done some studies around the corridor, and how are we going to plan to move people around when Sixth Street's a mess both in cars and having safe transportation for active transportation, bikes and that sort of thing," he said.

"Are Pavement Management Plans taking into account the studies that we've done on where people are going to be driving and walking and riding in that timeframe — what are we two years out potentially from the start of that? Hopefully we're planning on how we're going be moving people around when that stuff's underway," Joyce said.

Along those lines, Vice Mayor Amy Dzialowski asked how the PMP fit into maintenance or creation of new sidewalks.

"I do know we receive comments from the public requesting certain locations to look at possibly upgrading the sidewalks or improving the crosswalks so we do put a list together of that — and we have our internal list," Small said.

It was not discussed at the meeting where funds would come from to make up for projected budget shortfalls.

Small spoke about the overall goals of the PMP.

"If you focused only on the reconstruction of streets you're going to spend a lot of money and not get a bigger bang for the buck — you need to focus not only the reconstruction, but also on the maintenance — so you try to balance that out as much as you can to try to prolong that life," Small said.

While plans are approved for the complete annual proposed PMP, the projects are usually brought one-by-one back through TPAC and City Council before final monies are approved and construction begins.

"Just to clarify," Joyce said, "what we'd be approving here is just the general idea that these are the projects we are going to do. Each of these projects will end up getting bid out individually and we'll have more approvals for each of the projects before we get started."