Polk County, Indy share similar concerns about where rubber meets road

So, when federal infrastructure dollars started pouring into the state, some here began wondering when the money will land in Polk County. It turns out Polk County officials are wondering the same thing, specifically pertaining to gas-tax revenue.

“We are concerned about state roads that run through our local jurisdictions affecting our constituents’ daily lives,” said Polk County Commissioner Craig Pope.

Along with Pope, the other two commissioners, Lyle Mordhorst and Jeremy Gordon, sent a joint letter to all three gubernatorial candidates citing the need – by whoever wins the election – for a top-down audit of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) on “your first day in office as governor.”

The commissioners haven’t received any response so far. However, in their letter they observe a situation that appears similar to the one facing Independence: Periodic repairs by patch crews aren’t succeeding as a long-range approach.

“We are confident that you know as well as we do that this is not an effective management strategy and structural failure is imminent,” the commissioners wrote.

When road decay occurs due to debilitation, the financial picture can change substantially.

“It is my understanding that to qualify for maintenance the thickness of the asphalt has to be two inches or less,” said Polk County Administrator Greg Hansen.

If the amount of material needed to fix the cratering is more than two inches of asphalt, it goes into “capital outlay.” That’s a different funding process, which usually takes longer and competes with other projects statewide, Hansen said.

This could affect Independence, as well. Independence oversees nearly 39 miles of streets and roadways, but two of the main thoroughfares in town – Main Street north of Monmouth Street and all of Monmouth Street – are under state jurisdiction. The responsibility for repair is through ODOT, according to Gerald Fisher, public works director for Independence.

Monmouth Street, perhaps the biggest source of public complaint, is off-limits to city crews – it’s part of Highway 51.  Recently, ODOT highway crews filled potholes and fixed broken pavement along Monmouth Street.

“While there is still more work to be done, patches were put in a number of places,” said Mayor John McArdle. “I am pleased that by working with ODOT we were able to get needed repairs on the main road through town. I look forward to their continued efforts.”

However, a “pavement census” submitted to the Independence City Council in 2015 showed that municipal streets need more treatment, too. Only about half of the city’s streets were rated as “good” at the time of the study by Portland-based Pavement Services Inc. six years ago. The report warned that lack of intervention to keep them that way could increase costs substantially.

The pavement analysis identified many millions of dollars’ worth of work to be done on the street system – a cost that exceeded available resources at the time, explained David Clyne, former city manager of Independence. 

But the absence of the necessary funding from gas-tax revenues made it likely the city would have been forced to issue general obligation bonds to help pay for the street repair.

“During my tenure, we did not feel it appropriate at that time to ask the voters that question,” he said.

Since then, the pavement study for Independence has expired; Its shelf life was estimated to be out-of-date after five years.

Eventually, a new pavement study will have to be undertaken, Fisher said. That will take a special consultant, an individual with training and experience in pavement condition assessment, he explained.

Whether pavement is reconditioned or replaced takes careful examination to determine the priority aligned with available funding, Fisher noted. One potentially important factor is to identify areas where both underground pipes and pavement can be restored at the same time.

“This was done in front of the building,” Fisher said, referring to the portion of Main Street by the Independence Civic Center. “The street was in poor condition, and the water line needed to be replaced, and so the pipe got upsized and the street was improved – at the same time.”

In terms of streets and highways, Oregon has the dubious distinction of being about average in nearly every category of road conditions. It is roughly mid-way down the list of states with the worst pothole problems, according to the statistics compiler Stacker, a news outlet. And Oregon’s infrastructure was given a C+ grade by the American Society of Civil Engineers in their last survey. Also, just like about half of the nation, almost a fourth of Oregon’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition, as rated by TRIP, a national transportation research non-profit.

TRIP placed the annual cost to consumers in the state at $266 per driver “in the form of additional repairs, accelerated vehicle depreciation and increased fuel consumption and tire wear.”

Last fall, the US Congress approved a historic level of new funding for national infrastructure – hundreds of billions of dollars in spending. At the time, Oregon was expected to receive about $400 million to be applied for road maintenance, including pothole eradication.

In the meantime, ODOT personnel have suggested keeping an eye on the road.

“We have eight thousand miles of roads and we are familiar with it but we don’t have eyes on it all the time,” said Angela Beers-Seydel, ODOT’s public information officer for transportation projects.

She advised any citizen who spots a potential problem on a state roadway to call 1-888-275-6368 to report it or email askodot@odot.oregon.gov.

(Trammart News Service, of Trammart Inc., is solely responsible for the style and content of news accounts it provides.)