SEQUIM — The city will seek bids next month to overlay Fir Street from Fifth Avenue to Ninth Avenue.
David Garlington, Sequim’s public works director, told the City Council on Monday night that the project will include an overlay of a cul-de-sac on Klahn Place and reconstruction of a portion of North Seventh Avenue near West Alder Loop that was damaged by water from a broken main in April.
Garlington said improving Fir Street is part of the city’s long-term plan to make it an east-west connection route and to eventually connect Ninth Avenue from the roundabout on Washington Street to Hendrickson Road.
Fir Street in front of the Sequim School District’s property is not a part of this project, but Garlington said city staff view that area as a corridor project that will be “received well by people who control [grant] money.”
The city budgeted $473,000 for the proposed Fir Street projects as part of its pavement rehabilitation program.
Pavement condition
Garlington said to maintain the city’s pavement condition index of 70 — which is based on a study by city consultants of roads cracking, depressions and utility trenches — will become more costly in the coming years.
Consultants rated the roads in 2011, and city staff re-evaluates them on a regular basis.
“We’ve gotten to the point in the city that it’s a complicated puzzle to find the roads that we most want to pave that we don’t need to do utility work on as well,” Garlington said.
“We’ve kind of taken the easy ones the last few years.”
By maintaining current expenses at about $500,000 a year, Garlington said, the city’s roads will go gradually down to a rating of about 62 by 2021.
He said to maintain a pavement condition of 70 citywide, the city must spend much more annually, going from $1.1 million in 2017 to more than $2.1 million in 2021.
The pavement rehabilitation budget tentatively won’t be used entirely this year on the Fir Street project, so city staff is compiling a pedestrian improvement project proposal for filling in sidewalk gaps and improving curbs to become compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act on Blake Avenue and Brown Road.
Garlington said city staff plan to be proactive in improving curbs and driveway entrances, and will present an ADA upgrade program at a later date.
Typically, pavement rehabilitation projects are presented sooner in the year to allow work to be done during drier and sunnier conditions.
These projects will go to bid later in the season because the parking lot project now underway at the Water Reuse Demonstration Site took staff time, as staff aimed for completion before August’s Dungeness Cup.
The city maintains 56 miles of roads. Alleyways aren’t rated in the pavement condition index.
________
Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
