Public ‘begging’ for help. What’s the holdup with Turlock road repairs?
Three months after Turlock Mayor Amy Bublak announced goals to fix 400 miles of roads within five years, the City Council on Tuesday approved requests for consultants to propose plans to achieve them.
Turlock lacks the staff needed to plan requested road repairs within five years, per the request for proposals, so the city is seeking a consultant.
The requests for proposals and information ask experts to help the city find funding, analyze conditions and accelerate road repair projects, Interim Development Director Nathan Bray said. The council allocated $5.6 million of this fiscal year’s expected Measure A sales tax revenue for road rehabilitation, but the request says Turlock needs an estimated $230 million to fix roads. The total would bring all city roads to a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of at least 80 out of 100, per the pavement management software StreetSaver.
On average, Turlock roads have a PCI of 55, which is down from 62 in 2016, according to StreetSaver.
Bublak announced goals to rehabilitate roads in her May 6 State of the City Address. Since then, the city has worked to hire a roads project manager and was set to begin interviews for the position Wednesday. Still, Bublak said the city needs consultant help and does not have enough employees to strategize road rehabilitation.
“We need to put everything together with the new tax — bonding, anything else — and fast forward what we’re doing,” Bublak said during the meeting. “I think that’s what the public has been begging us to do.”
Turlock also receives about $7.9 million annually for roads from gas tax, federal grants, Stanislaus County’s Measure L and California’s Senate Bill 1, per the request for proposals. About $4.9 million of those funds can be spent on road rehabilitation after costs for annual maintenance, per the request.
The requests ask consultants to evaluate both reconstruction and preventative maintenance projects, Bray said during the meeting. Roads in Districts 1 and 2 are generally older and in worse states than Districts 3 and 4, he added.
Council Members Nicole Larson and Rebecka Monez, who represent the aforementioned districts in the southern half of Turlock, asked Bray if it is possible to prioritize or list roads that have not been repaired for the longest times. Staff can estimate which roads have not been maintained by finding when crews built them, Bray said, because when they were last maintained is difficult to determine.
The council unanimously approved the consultant requests. Responses to both the request for proposals and the request for information are due on Aug. 20 and must be sent to the city Development Services Department.
