Demand more cash for Elgin resurfacing

A couple of months ago, the Elgin City Council convened in a secluded location to prioritize the city budget direction for 2008 and beyond. Proudly announced were the top 10 priorities for the coming year.

However, one item was conspicuously missing from that hallowed list - that of street repair. But building a new softball field made the final cut.

Although softball may be a priority to some, no one was surprised when a recent city- sponsored poll found only 48 percent of residents satisfied with street conditions and repair, the lowest mark of dissatisfaction on the published survey.

For decades the city street resurfacing and reconstruction budgets have been short-changed. Guidelines generally call for a residential street to be resurfaced every 12 years; however, many streets have been extended far beyond that time line, continuing to fall further into disrepair while the number of streets in immediate need continues to grow.

Yet the proposed budget, as posted on the city's Web site, shows insufficient funding for resurfacing and street major repair, nowhere near the dollars needed to effect a realistic catch-up from years of neglect and under-funding.

There are two components to the street repair budget, neighborhood street resurfacing and neighborhood street reconstruction.

While the proposed budget for the latter is set to nearly double next year from approximately $3 million to $5.5 million, it is the resurfacing that seems to be grossly under-funded at a flat $400,000 annually from 2008 to 2011. That may seem like a lot of money for the process which grinds off the top 1½ inches of asphalt and replaces it with new, but at $29 per curb to curb foot, it does not go far.

By so consistently under-funding resurfacing, our city streets continue to deteriorate to a point where reconstruction becomes a necessity.

This means we continue to fall further and further behind in the less costly street repairs, and create more costly and extensive repairs later.

All the while we drive on sub-standard, rapidly decaying streets that continue to grow in number.

What is need is an exponential increase in the budget dollars and an accelerated scheduling of the less expense resurfacing projects.

The time is immediate for all of you folks who think, as I do, that improved city streets should have priority over a new softball field.

Chime in on this with your councilmen, as the final touches are today being applied to the 2008 budget and five-year plan.

Demand that much more money be given our city streets resurfacing programs.

Fred Moulton

Elgin