CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The city of Clearlake is planning a project to test how it can extend the usable life and quality of the road grading projects it’s carrying out thanks to Measure V funding.
Consulting City Engineer David Swartz presented to the council earlier this month a proposal to do a chip seal project on a portion of the city’s gravel roads in an effort to ascertain whether they could extend the life of road improvements.
He said he took the plan to City Manager Alan Flora, who thought it was a good idea to present to the council.
The discussion at the July 11 meeting begins at the 35:44 minute mark in the video above. A staff report is included in the agenda packet below, beginning at page 37.
In April, city staff started planning about how to use the city’s Measure V sales tax funding for roads to do grading throughout the city, Swartz said.
He said one crew started in the Avenues and another in the “tree” streets – those named for type of trees.
Swartz said he and Road Superintendent Mike Baker visit the work sites weekly to see the challenges the crews face and understand what is prohibiting them from getting more street miles done.
In those inspections, Swartz said they’ve seen that the gravel roads that previously were graded already are degrading.
It seems, he added, like the city is in a cycle of grading and regrading, and he questioned if they could take another approach.
That led to considering solutions to start minimizing the need to regrade the same roads over and again. As a result, Swartz said they came up with a test project, which he said is a double chip seal over the top of gravel roads, which would provide a much longer lifespan of more than five years. Other rural communities use the double chip seal solution.
He said they analyzed manpower, staffing, fuel and other factors and said it currently costs $10,000 a mile to grade roads. That grading only results in six months of useful life, so the roads need to be regraded twice annually, for a total cost of $20,000.
Swartz said they were looking at a 24-foot-wide double chip seal project and have called contractors for bids.
The estimate is for $70,000 a mile to double chip seal the gravel roads, and such work would have a six-year lifespan, Swartz said. That’s compared to a cost of $120,000, per mile, for twice-annual road grading over a six-year period.
Swartz said they looked at areas that would hold a chip seal and proposed a mile-long project area in the southwest Avenues, on 19th through 22nd avenues and on Oak and Eureka, that has good road base and drainage.
District 2 Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said the proposal was exciting, noting original quotes of $5 million over 10 years for basic road grading.
Sabatier pointed to the domino effect of road improvements, which increase the quality of neighborhoods, with property values in turn rising and improving the quality of life, and the city getting fewer complaints and requests for service.
He asked about the use of Perma-Zyme, a stabilization project meant to lower road construction and maintenance costs that the city previously had considered using. Swartz said the city assessed the product but found it didn’t hold up through the winter.
Flora added that crews have started using more gravel road base as part of their mix, which is new, and was part of their effort to try other things after they didn’t see the results they wanted from Perma-Zyme.
Mayor Russell Cremer said that, despite more gravel being added to the mix, the roads are still showing washboarding. Swartz agreed.
Community member Ray Silva asked about using recycled materials like those currently kept at the city’s corporation yard. Swartz said those leftover grindings don’t work well for the gravel roads and instead they are purchasing natural base rock and using the grindings for pothole repair.
Councilman Dirk Slooten asked if it would be easier to fix the chip seal project area after the six-year usable life. Swartz said yes.
“I’m all in favor of getting a test project going,” Slooten said.
Councilman Phil Harris said chip seal had been thought for some time to be cost prohibitive, but he said he had lived for many years in Spring Valley where chip seal was primarily used. He said those roads had heavy traffic but held up over the course of 10 to 15 years.
Going back to do chip seal over the top of a previous chip seal makes it almost like a paved road, Harris said.
Harris suggested city staff contact area utilities to find out what work they may need to do in the area to prevent them from cutting into the roads after they have been repaired.
He said the Perma-Zyme testing was done in an area of Ogulin Canyon Road with little traffic, and it held up there. “We may have done a very poor test run,” he said, adding they should have chosen a road with traffic.
The council agreed with Swartz’s plan and gave it the green light.
Flora told Lake County News on Wednesday that staff is now going ahead with the next steps.
“Staff is working up bid documents now and we will likely release those in the next week or so. We will open construction bids toward the end of August and then take a contract back to council for award,” Flora said.
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071119 Clearlake City Council agenda packet by LakeCoNews on Scribd