Ten years of Save Our Streets: new software reveals downtick in condition of local streets
Published 1:40 pm Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Pavement conditions of local streets are showing deterioration despite 10 years of efforts under Auburn’s Save Our Streets Program.
That information is contained in “Save Our Streets, 2014 Year End Report,” compiled by the City’s engineering department and released this month.
Street Systems Engineer Jai Carter explained to the Auburn City Council on Monday how it happened, as he presented the latest pavement data available for local streets vis-a-vis the street preservation program.
According to Carter:
“We had a pavement rating system called Streetsaver that we used for several years, and we used data points that we collected in 2006 and 2008 for annexed areas where we rated pavement throughout the whole city. In 2013 the City had another pavement rating company come on board, and it used a newer piece of software to manage the whole system,” Carter said.
That software, Carter said, gave the City one more data point, but it was a crucial one.
“The downturn in the pavement conditions, we traced that back to the original program. It didn’t really do a good job of projecting the degradation of pavement over the years. And so what you have is the result of that, and a couple of other factors,” Carter said.
The City established its Save Our Streets Program in 2005, but its history likely began five years earlier on the night voters throughout the state approved Initiative 695, the “$30 License Tab Initiative,” thus repealing the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax and replacing it with a flat $30 annual fee on private cars and trucks.
Suddenly, the state said that it no longer had the funds it had once had to distribute to cities for local street preservation and construction.
And as the City of Auburn’s local street needs began to bank up, the City found itself unable to address the problems.
At its lowest point, the City had only $150,000 available for this purpose.
About then, City leaders reported fielding hot complaints from residents upset about the poor street conditions.
In 2004 the Auburn City Council proposed, and voters approved, a program that allowed the City’s property tax levy to generate additional revenue to be used only for local street preservation and improvement.
In the following years, Save Our Streets, or SOS, generated from $1.2 to $2.6 million.
And things began to look up.
In 2005, the City had about 59 miles of local streets that needed attention in one form or another, whether the street called for reconstruction, overlay or other measures. This included streets on Lea Hill and the west hill that the City later annexed.
Since then the SOS program has improved the condition of 48 miles of city streets, though other streets in the network continue to age and deteriorate.
City data show local street conditions trending up between 2004 and 2013.
In 2014 alone, the City rebuilt three streets: 24th Street Southeast between M and R; K Street between East Main and 4th Street Northeast; and H Street between 17th Street Southeast and 21st Street Southeast.
On Dec. 31, 2012, the practice of funding the program from property taxes ended. In 2013 the City Council earmarked sales taxes from new construction to dedicate to the program. All property taxes would henceforth be retained in the general fund.
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Street facts
Arterial streets: major streets built to support a large volume of traffic traveling to neighboring jurisdictions, to state highways and across the city.
Collector streets: streets built to support a moderate amount traffic and connect neighborhoods and industrial-comercial areas to arterial streets or other areas.
Local streets: intended to support a low volume of traffic and connect local homes and businesses to an arterial or collector street. More than half of Auburn’s streets are local streets.
