Plant City engineers are helping to create a different kind of road map for the city, one that won’t guide travel, but help to improve it.
The City Commission Oct. 9 authorized work to begin on the Pavement Management Plan, a new project that will assess and rank the condition of the city’s 160 miles of roads, which will be used to create a plan for using funds raised from the recent property-tax increase.
Commissioners recently approved a one point property tax increase to raise almost $2 million annually with the sole purpose of fixing the city’s streets. Commissioners have frequently listed the poor condition of city-maintained roads among the most common complaints from residents and visitors.
The Pavement Management Plan will create a five-year plan for how and where the money will be spent.
“This will provide direction the city can use in order to address those conditions everyone has seen on the roads here in Plant City,” City Engineer Mike Schenk said. “I think we’re making the correct step forward. I think this will be extremely beneficial for the city to have moving forward for these street repairs.”
The city’s engineering department will work with Tampa-based consulting firm Kisinger Campo and Associates to create the plan, which should be ready within the next five to seven months, Schenk said. Kisinger Campo has completed similar projects with Hillsborough County and Temple Terrace.
Creating the plan is a “boots on the ground” job. Raw data will be collected from visual inspections, photo gathering and more. The information is then pumped into a software program called PAVER, which uses the data to create a pavement condition index (PCI) that rates roads from zero (failed) to 100 (excellent). Road assessments are based on standards set by the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM), an organization that sets guidelines for analyzing a number of materials including roads and parking lots.
“This program will assess the existing pavement conditions such as type, quantity and severity, and the pavement repair strategies for the city including historical pavement resurfacing/repairs,” Interim City Manager Kim Leinbach said in a letter to the city commission.
The PAVER program is incorporated into a geographic information system (GIS) that creates maps and visualizations based on the collected data. Plant City officials can use the information from PAVER and GIS to understand which roads are in most need of repair and create a priority list of projects.
Engineering, Schenk said, will also be working with the Utilities Department to incorporate any necessary utility repair into street repairs.
“One thing we want to do is make sure we look at utilities and condition of utilities before we resurface roads,” Schenk said. “There’s nothing worse than having to cut a brand new roadway open to repair a utility. We want to try to avoid that as much as possible.”
It’s a strategy the city is currently using in ongoing resurfacing projects, like the one taking place on West Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Major road resurfacing projects began last year and will continue in the current fiscal year, but the Pavement Management Plan wouldn’t be incorporated until the 2018-2019 fiscal year.
Ultimately, the city hopes it can move from a system of repair to maintenance.
“You take care of your worst streets first, then you start getting into a program where, eventually, you’ll have a maintenance program instead of what we have now where a lot of the streets are in a serious condition,” Schenk said.
According to city documents, the plan will cost about $125,000, to be taken from the current street resurfacing funds. Funds from the property tax increase won’t be used for the plan. Schenk said the city will reassess road conditions and create another plan in five years.