by James Jordan, Sumner Newscow — Streets and their condition is always a topic of interest in Wellington.  City officials are well aware many streets need fixed, but fixing streets is very costly.

At the town hall meeting Tuesday night in Wellington streets director Jeremy Jones went over the findings of a study done to rate all the streets in the city. The study cost about $24,000 and was done last year. City officials believe that was money well spent as it gives the city some real data on conditions of the streets. The data is also in software that makes studies of many kinds possible.

“That was a game changer for us,” Mayor Shelley Hansel said. “Now we have a road map. We know where our money and efforts need to go.”

The study was done by a company based in Georgia. It involved actually walking the streets and taking core samples to determine the actual quality of the streets.

“It was a scientific method for doing an evaluation, physically looking at the streets,” Jones said.

Each of the streets were rated on a scale. The composite score for all of Wellington’s streets is 45 on a scale of 100. A “good” rating is 50-78. Wellington is in the upper range of the “poor” section when it comes to the quality of streets.

One relatively bright spot is that the collector streets, or mostly used streets, are rated at 62, in the “good” category, while residential streets are at a 36.

There are a total of 62.1. miles of streets in the city limits.

Jones said the study, and the input from those doing the study, has influenced the city to try to get the most it an out of its money. In light of that they are spending more on roads that are already good, in order to keep them from getting bad. That means worse streets are being fixed as money is available. That is the opposite from how it used to be done, which was an attitude of fix the worst ones first.

Jones said to fix a bad street that has to be replaced would cost about $1 million per mile. With that money they can do things to streets in decent shape, covering more than a mile, and keep them from getting bad.

Currently, 28 percent of the streets in the city are rated as very poor or failing. Thirty Four percent are poor, and 19 percent are rated good, while 20 percent are rated very good.

One point is that the very poor roads probably won’t get worse, so the feeling is it is better to keep the good ones in good shape. Jones said once a street starts to go bad, it can go bad quickly so it is important to keep streets sealed so water does not get into the base of the road structure.

He said treating a street with a seal or other methods, cost about one dollar a yard, while replacing a street cost six or seven dollars a yard. By doing things to protect a street the life of the street can be extended by 20 years.

The city currently spends about $125,000 per year for street improvements, and that does not go very far.

According to one of the charts Jones had at the meeting, if the city continues spending $125,000 per year for street improvements, the rating will fall from a 45 to a 30 in 10 years.. At the other end of the spectrum, if the city spent $1 million each year the rating could go up to the mid-70s in 10 years.

Recycling

Jones also talked about recycling in the city. He said the program does not make money for the city, but the city makes enough to cover a lot of the costs involved.

They have done to not sorting recyclables by type, and that has saved some money. They ship that to Wichita each week.

Jones said for every 4,000 tons of trash the city processes, 277 tons are recycled, so the percentage is still lower than what he would like.

The city also runs a recycling pickup for businesses downtown, and that has increased the amount that has been recycled a lot. They use a trash truck to do this, and use that same truck to collect recyclables from citizens on Saturday morning. That had led some to wonder if it was really being recycled. Jones said it is just finished filling up Saturday morning and is still taken to Wichita for recycling.

Curbside recycling might be a possibility eventually, but not any time soon.

Code Enforcement

The issue of code enforcement, which was talked about at Monday night’s work session came up again. Hansel told the small group there is a breakdown in communication somewhere and the city is trying to find out what the problem is.

There are many trashy yards and alleys around town, but not very many cases get to court, or to the city council which is where people would go to appeal if they were fined.

Hansel is not opposed to allowing code enforcement officers to write tickets and raising the penalties for not complying with orders to clean up.

Discussion of how to get the city cleaned up will be continued.

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