Lincoln Park City Manager and Finance Director Lisa Griggs (left) speaks about Goddard Road during the March 23 City Council meeting while Mayor Maureen Tobin listens.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
LINCOLN PARK – City Manager and Finance Director Lisa Griggs updated the City Council on the status of Goddard Road and its urgent need for repairs during the March 23 council meeting.
She said the city has applied for grant funding with the help of Hennessey Engineering, as well as for congressional spending grants.
“Those do take time, and even if they are awarded it’s generally two to three years before the funding comes through,” she said. “So, I had previously talked about doing some skin coating out there, and we did have DPS workers out there today doing some patch work that’s just temporary to get us through.”
Skin or surface patching is a pavement maintenance technique in which a thin layer of new asphalt is applied directly over existing damaged or deteriorated asphalt.
Griggs said the skin coating would be done on Goddard from Fort Street to Dix Highway, and the money to do the work would not be taken from the $150,000 for the regular road program skin coating allocation.
“So, rather than take it away from that, if council chooses to go forward with this, I can bring a budget amendment to the next meeting and have the funds allocated for skin coating,” she said. “It will make the road much more drivable and it will get us about three to four years and give us time to find out if we got grant funding, and if we don’t get the grant funding, then we definitely need to build that into our budget – the cost is quite expensive.”
Griggs said there is no money in this year’s budget for Goddard because all of the road plans have already been submitted and adopted for the year.
She said one thing to keep in mind is that when the city applies for a grant, the people disbursing funds come out and look at the condition of the road, so putting down a coating could hurt their chances of getting a grant, but they could videotape the road conditions before doing the short-term coating.
“We don’t know 100 percent sure that that would satisfy them, but we plan to video it and take pictures to submit with that,” Griggs said. “I would like to go forward with it, but, of course, I want council’s feedback on what you would like to do.”
Mayor Maureen Tobin said she believes the council realizes that the only option they have is to move forward with the plan as outlined.
“We cannot leave Goddard in the condition that it is, and the sooner that we make this decision the better off the entirety of our population will be,” she said. “Not only residents, but people that use that road to travel to and from.”
Councilmember Eric Szor voiced his opposition to patching in favor of a more thorough repair, and fears that skin coating could hurt the city’s chances of getting grant funding to repair Goddard.
Tobin said the city’s engineers feel that videotaping the road surface prior to the short-term skin-coating should serve as sufficient proof that the roadway needs to be torn up and replaced.
Griggs said they are still trying to figure out the timing of the Goddard Road repairs, and said it is still too cold to do asphalt coating.
Tobin said it would be the end of April before weather conditions would allow for asphalt coating.
“So, we have time to work out what we can do,” she said.
Councilmember Lylian Ross said the skin coating will last for the amount of time it would take to acquire and receive grant funding for more extensive road repair.
“I think skin coating it now is going to save us all the cold patching that we’re going to have to do in between,” she said. “So, if we just take that money and put it in toward skin coating, I think we are going to save in the long run, because Goddard, in all honesty, should have been patched, I think, every other week, in all honesty.”
Ross said it’s beyond belief how badly Goddard has been allowed to deteriorate.
“It’s horrific when you’re driving down Goddard and people are paying more attention to the holes than they are to traffic themselves, and you find yourself not just maneuvering to miss a hole but you’re also maneuvering to miss the car that’s coming at you because they are trying to avoid a hole as well,” she said.
Griggs said if the city pulled out $2.7 million from its regular road plan it would wipe away all of the road plans that are on the schedule to been done this year.
“Those roads would not be eligible for this type of grant,” she said. “So, this is why we felt this is the best course of action.”
Griggs confirmed that grant funding requests have been submitted to fix Emmons Road as well.