Planning For Road Repairs Continues

The City of Oskaloosa is developing a plan to help fix and maintain the road system in Oskaloosa

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The talk of the current condition of local streets and roads is a common conversation around the Oskaloosa area. The local coffee shop or beauty shop usually contains at least one conversation on the subject.

Back in May of this year, Oskaloosa Public Works Director Akhilesh Pal outlined to the council a proposed plan on helping to repair and maintain the streets of Oskaloosa. In this power point presentation, it was stated that there would be an annual pavement evaluation performed in March/April of each year, evaluating them for maintenance and or reconstruction.

After a few glitches along the way Pal says that he is now working those out with ISU and to this point they have not been paid the $14,000.00 fee until their work is completed. Pal is also currently waiting on the software from the ISU that will help them predict the road conditions in the future, and to help better plan ahead.

“They have already given us for all the streets what the condition of the pavement is, we have a reading for every pavement in the city of Oskaloosa,” Pal stated.

I went on to ask him questions of any concerns from residents that a condition listed on the map doesn’t match what they believe the condition of their road is. “If someone tells you that [talking with me about reports I have taken] I would certainly like to see that. If there are any errors, I don’t believe there are any errors in that map,” Pal said. If you would like to see a copy of the map, you can CLICK HERE for your own copy.

Pal is interested in making sure the map survey is accurate, and if you think you’re not properly represented,then he would encourage people to contact them so they can verify the road versus the report. “If it’s faulty, I would like to see it. We haven’t’ gone and checked each and every road but yes we did go and survey the results and it was comparative to the results that have been created,” Pal explained.

“What ever is there in the street….every unit is taken, every crack is taken, every pothole is taken into consideration. 91 different kinds of units which are measured on the street,” Pal said about the study that lead up to the plan that is now being worked out to help maintain Osky’s roads.

Sealcoating is one form of maintenance the city does to help maintain roads, but according to Pal, the city don’t have the money to sealcoat every year. Many of those roards represented on the map as green have been sealcoated recently. First and Second priority roads will combine to cost the city $162,450.00.

Sealcoat is made of liquid asphalt spread across the road with a base stabilization of calcium chloride with road stone and washed chips packed into the road surface to help smooth out the overall road, helping to seal it from further weather damage.

Other forms of rehabilitation for the roadways include concrete pavement cuts and crack sealing.

I asked Pal when real work was going to be starting on the roads in Oskaloosa. “In August we are going to get a final analyses of what our goals will be. What proactive actions we should be taking on the streets. Final results of this study will be given to us. It’s not a huge factor, but it will give us some what should we be doing 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. Which roads should we target now. We have already bought the crack sealing machine and we can start aiming at the roads which is in fairly good condition. We should only be aiming at repairing roads that are only in bad condition, we ought to maintain the roads that are in good condition. This is one of the things I will be using very frequently trying to see that we maintain this favorable condition and trying to reduce the yellows [road map, yellow equals fair], then also maintain these greens and blues.”

I asked Pal if this study would have to be revisited in the next 5 years to examine the condition of the roads and to re-evaluate their plan. “I would like to every 2 or 3 years. There are cities that actually do it on a yearly basis,” Pal said.

“As soon as we have the budgets in place, we have every year or two years we will be working on reconstructing roads, but again it comes down to budgets,” Pal explained of how they are looking at implementing these plans along with the budget.