The San Benito County Public works Department is not wasting any
time on starting $1.33 million in local road repair projects, which
will begin by the end of the month.
The San Benito County Public works Department is not wasting any time on starting $1.33 million in local road repair projects, which will begin by the end of the month.
With the approval Tuesday of a series of contracts by the Board of Supervisors, the Public Works Department wasted no time into putting its plans into action.
Construction on the road overlay projects are scheduled to begin May 27 and work should be completed by June 17, Assistant Public Works Director Peter Corn said.
A road overlay covers worn-out sections of roads with a coating of new asphalt and extends the life of streets or highways.
The project will extend the life of several deteriorating sections of heavily traveled local roads with a series of overlay projects that include:
San Felipe Road from Shore Road to Highway 156.
Fallon Road from Fairview Road to the city limit.
East Fallon Road from Fairview Road to Spring Grove Road.
McCloskey Road from Fairview Road to the city limit.
Santa Ana Road from Fairview Road to the city limit.
The project was made possible from the Public Works Department’s ability to keep costs down on previous road projects. The savings will come largely from having county crews perform the overlay work instead of paying a construction company.
Corn said the construction time should not last more than the allotted two weeks because this is the third or fourth time that public woks crews have done this type of overlay work and they’ve become better at it with experience.
“They are getting to be old hands at this,” Corn said.
The five sections were chosen for overlays for several reasons.
“They are heavily damaged roads and the traffic on them is very high,” Corn said. “They are among the most heavily traveled road in the county.”
County Public Works Director Doug Koenig initially gave the Board two suggestions for using about $1.3 million in funds from several state grants to repair local roads.
The first option was to complete repairs on San Justo Road from Lucy Brown Road to San Juan Highway. That project, at a cost of approximately $755,000, came in well under the projected $1.34 million budget.
Some of the funds for the overlay project were part of the $23.5 million promised to the county from the 1999 settlement against four major U.S. tobacco companies. Last year, the county made an agreement to take a lump sum portion of the $23.5 million now rather than risk not getting any of the money at all.
