SIKESTON — The City of Sikeston continues to work to improve the city’s streets, attempting to hit more spots than ever this year.
“This is a little bit bigger than what we normally present,” said Jay Lancaster, director of Public Works, when he presented this year’s street plan to the Sikeston City Council Monday. “We try to take a very wholistic approach to working on our streets. We obviously have the big stuff like milling off asphalt and repaving streets. In one case this year we are proposing tearing out a concrete street and replace it.”
The cost of the street plan, that was approved by Council Monday, is estimated at $900,971.43, including construction and engineering.
The plan includes mill and resurfacing at North Scott Street, West North Street, Shady Lane, Comstock, Collins Drive, Benton Street and West Wakefield. It also includes reconstruction of Baker Lane and the intersection at South New Madrid and Trotter and ADA modifications to certain sidewalks.
“In addition to that we do preventive maintenance in certain areas where we feel the pavement can be preserved and we do crack sealing and seal coating,” Lancaster said, with seal coating planned in the Glenn area and Cardinal and Thrush.
“We try to spread these out all over town and we try to do different approaches,” Lancaster said.
There are also potential add on or alternate projects, such as mill and resurfacing of Stephens, Euclid Avenue, Crowe Street and West Wakefield and pavement repair and overlay at Woodlawn, Sikes Avenue. Also included in the alternate projects is intersection reconstruction at North Kingshighway and East Center Street and New Madrid Avenue and North Street.
“Some streets we could move into should additional funding become available or for some reason we have to cut something out or we get really good savings,” Lancaster said. “I can tell you, our estimating is on the conservative side.”
Lancaster said people often approach him and tell him their street is bad.
“Sometimes it may be just one or two spots that bother some people and maybe we just don’t know about it. We can’t be everywhere and always know about them,” Lancaster said, adding that the city will continue to fix small spots when they can.
In addition to the street plan approved Monday, Council previously approved a plan in which Putz Construction will be working to repair 50 spots on Sikeston city streets through the winter months.
CDBG funding
There is also additional work that can be done if the City of Sikeston is approved for a Community Development Block Grant.
Lancaster told Council the City is eligible for the next four years to apply for CDBG funding and they have a street category that the City applied for.
“They would like us to spend a certain percentage of that (funding) on low to moderate areas,” Lancaster said. “We decided to dedicate a majority of it to low to moderate income areas. For the most part it is asphalt projects. Some of them are going to be milling and resurfacing.”
Lancaster said some of the spots are WPA concrete areas and we’ve been working with some of the asphalt companies to come up with ideas for low-volume routes.
“We’re going to ask for a half million in CDBG money for streets along with some match money we have set aside for these grants in the budget,” Lancaster said. “That’s an additional $700,000 worth of work we wouldn’t normally get to do. That’s a big boost.”
The proposed projects with the pending CDBG funding are pavement repair and overlay on Hardin Street, Matthews Avenue, East Kathleen Avenue and South Prairie Avenue along with intersections at East Kathleen and South Prairie. Also included is mill/overlay work at South Frisco, Kendall, West Gladys, William Street, Daniel and Dover.
Lancaster and the City hope to know if they were approved for the funding next month.
ARPA funds
Last week, Council approved a plan for spending of the City’s $3.2 million in ARPA funds, which also included some street work.
Included in the plan was stormwater improvements and additional piping in the Anderson area, stormwater improvements at South West and Murray Lane and the Goldbriar area, cleaning out Lateral C ditch south of the city limits and cleaning out and enlarge culverts under the railroad track at the Greenbriar Ditch.
“What’s exciting about this is we are hitting a lot areas in need,” Lancaster said. “We are hitting a lot of areas in town. We are using a lot of different approaches. And if we are successful in getting these funds, instead of spending $800,000 in funds on streets like we normally do, we’ll be spending $2.5 million and that’s covering a lot of ground.”