City of Clearlake prepares for record paving and road work season
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — The city of Clearlake is poised to begin a record-breaking year of roadwork and paving.
On Thursday the Clearlake City Council unanimously approved a $335,048 contract for the city’s 2021 Chip Seal Project with Pavement Coatings, a company that did a similar chip seal test project with the city last year.
Public Works Director Dale Goodman said the new project will be for 5.6 miles of chip seal work in the Avenues area.
The discussion on the topic begins at the 1:50:00 mark in the video above.
Goodman congratulated the city council, City Manager Alan Flora and staff for the “amazing” amount of road work that is going to be done this year.
“I have never had this many balls in the year at one time. It’s incredible. We keep adding more,” said Goodman, who has spent 18 years working in the public works sector, not just in Clearlake but in larger cities of up to 100,000 residents.
The city of Clearlake has more than 100 miles of roads, with about 40 miles being unpaved. “That’s the result of just how the city has grown up. This wasn’t a master plan community,” said Goodman.
Clearlake, he added, “grew up like most cities grew up. So, as a result, we have unpaved roads.”
As a result of limited funds, paved roads have received limited maintenance mostly consisting of filling potholes and doing crackseal work. Goodman said additional work would be done occasionally if enough money could be scraped together.
Grading of unpaved roads, filling potholes and sealing cracks on paved roads is “not a great maintenance program if you want to keep your asphalt in good shape,” Goodman said.
Thanks to city voters passing the Measure V sales tax in 2017, Goodman said the city has had the funding to start to develop a pavement management program.
“The city has come a long way in a short period of time,” he said.
Last year, city staff put together a test project of one mile of unpaved road, Goodman said. They graded and rolled it, preparing it to put down a double chip seal layer.
He said the process consisted of putting down a layer of emulsion on the dirt, followed by a layer of chips, another layer of emulsion, more chips, then a fog seal.
“We didn't know for sure how that was going to work out in the long run,” Goodman said.
That project was completed eight months ago, and Goodman said it came through the winter and has held up well.
With that first project appearing to have worked, he said staff decided to bring forward this larger project, also in an area of the Avenues with good drainage.
He said staff has been out grading the roads where the chip seal work will be done, and as of Thursday they were about two-thirds of the way through it.
The project was put out to bid in March and Goodman said five companies sent in bids. Those bids were opened on April 22.
The low bidder was Pavement Coatings, the company that did last year’s chip seal test project. It bid $335,048. The highest bidder was American Pavement Systems, which bid $408,542.50, according to the staff report for the discussion.
Goodman said $400,000 was budgeted for the project, with an expectation that it could go as high as $500,000, so they were very pleased with Pavement Coatings’ lower bid.
The project will be paid for with Measure V funds, he added.
Councilman David Claffey asked if the work would account for 15 percent of the city’s unpaved roads, with Goodman confirming that was the case.
Claffey asked how many other roads Goodman’s team would be resurfacing in 2021.
Altogether, between three paving projects, Goodman said they will be doing about 15 miles of road. “Which is extraordinary,” he said, noting that at the cities he’s worked at, he’s never seen more than two or three miles of road work completed a year.
“This is just staggering the number of miles we’re going to be treating this year,” said Goodman.
Claffey asked about the last time the city has done so much road work, adding “maybe never.”
Goodman echoed that, adding that there may have been that much road work done in the city when the new Highway 53 was put in, but that project was done by Caltrans.
“This is a very big project,” said Claffey, thanking Goodman for his leadership.
“This is amazing that we’re getting this done,” said Councilmember Joyce Overton.
Since the city saved money on the bid, Councilwoman Russ Perdock asked Goodman if they are looking at adding more roadwork.
Goodman said, “Maybe.”
Flora, who indicated he had spoken to Perdock about the idea previously, noted, “It is extremely tempting to want to add on” to the work they’re already doing.
However, as tempting as it is, Flora cautioned that the city hasn’t yet gotten back the bids for its other Measure V projects, which include surface treatments on arterial streets.
His recommendation was to move forward with the enormous number of projects the city already has. “Maybe we go even bigger next year.”
Councilman Russ Cremer moved to approve the contract, with Perdock seconding and the council voting 5-0.
In other business on Thursday, the council heard a presentation by Dr. Cirilo Cortez, dean of the Lake County Campus of Woodland College, and interim Chancellor Dr. Art Pimentel regarding a promise program for Clearlake students, with council giving staff direction to work with the college on a plan.
The council also held a swearing-in of new police department employees and the presentation of police department employee awards, and presented proclamations declaring May 9 to 15 as Police Week and May 2 to 8 as Public Employee Appreciation Week, and May as Military Appreciation Month and Older Americans Month.
Also on Thursday, Mayor Dirk Slooten said he would appoint himself to serve on the county’s Visioning Forum Planning Committee, formed in February. The vote for the appointment was 5-0.
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