Preserving streets
New law seeks to minimize road deterioration in city
Once a street is cut open, it’s never the same. Water infiltrates through the cuts, as well as cracks and other surface damage, causing deterioration of the pavement.
The street network is one of the most significant assets owned by the City of Yuma. Seeking to better preserve its city roads, on June 19 the council unanimously added a subchapter to the city code titled “Street Preservation.” It prohibits the opening, cutting or excavating of any street or sidewalk without approval of the city engineer and contains guidelines related to work on public streets, easements or rights-of-way and outlining penalties for violations.
“Whenever the street surface is cut open, the patch used to close the opening back up is never as good as the original, uncut pavement,” a staff report explains. “The cut lines leave seams that allow water infiltration. When a newer pavement surface is cut, the result is often premature deterioration, thereby reducing the life span of that street segment, and resulting in increased pavement maintenance costs and earlier need to replace the pavement.”
Since 2016, the city has been developing a policy to discourage the cutting of newer pavement surfaces. Staff reviewed ordinances and policies from other cities in Arizona and Cali
fornia, and Yuma chose to model its new guidelines after the Goodyear ordinance.
The new chapter establishes pavement preservation guidelines, pavement restoration fees, and inspection and maintenance fees, which are in addition to regular permit fees.
The purpose of the Street Preservation ordinance is to ensure that work on city streets is performed according to approved city specifications and standards and that the city is compensated for the damage and early deterioration of street assets.
It also makes those requesting the permit partly responsible for the costs associated with implementing the permit and inspection service and additional maintenance.
Internal reviews of the then-proposed ordinance occurred through 2017 and 2018. In January 2018, a draft of the proposed ordinance was distributed to 55 members of the design and construction industry for review and feedback. The reviewers included engineering and architecture firms, contractors, materials suppliers, utility companies and developers.
After a month of review time, two companies provided feedback, which led to several significant improvements in the ordinance. After incorporating the feedback, in the middle of April, the city distributed the revised ordinance to the same 55 industry partners. None of them made further comments, the staff report states.
The fees and surcharges follow: $100 for a plan review; $100 for excavation; and $70 for an inspection. The surcharge for cuts on pavement less than 12 months old with openings less than 9 square feet or 9 linear feet of trench is $1,000. For cuts on trenches over 9 feet long for every 50 linear feet or fraction thereof is $2,500.
The surcharge for cuts on pavement 12 to 24 months old with openings less than 9 square feet or 9 linear feet of trench is $750, and for trenches over 9 feet long for every 50 linear feet or fraction thereof is $1,875.
The surcharge for cuts on pavement 24 to 36 months old with openings less than 9 square feet or 9 linear feet of trench is $500, and for trenches over 9 feet long for every 50 linear feet or fraction thereof is $1,250.
All pavement cut surcharge fees collected will be placed in the city’s street fund, which is designated for street maintenance, and will be used to offset the cost of resurfacing city streets.