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Youngstown street department temporarily filling potholes
YOUNGSTOWN
City street department employees are working round the clock, weather permitting, to temporarily fill potholes, starting with some of Youngstown’s most-traveled roads.
“We expect this to continue until we have the issue under control,” said Mayor John A. McNally. “They’ve got a lot of work to do. Every major road has major issues.”
As for how long the cold-patching work will occur, McNally said: “It will take many, many days. Getting these major holes or a string of holes filled is a top priority. I don’t recall the potholes being as bad as this last year. Roads that haven’t been paved have fallen apart quickly.”
The round-the-clock patching started at 11 p.m. Sunday with work done on Fifth, Wilson, South and Glenwood avenues as well as Meridian and Canfield roads and main downtown streets.
At 7 a.m. Monday, the city went to 12-hour shifts of patching with four crews, each having three members, McNally said. That crew handled more of Wilson and Fifth as well as Early Road, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Gypsy Lane, Indianola Avenue, Powersway, Southern Boulevard, Vestal Road, Industrial Road and Salt Springs Road, said Sean T. McKinney, the city’s buildings and grounds commissioner who oversees the street department.
McNally specifically mentioned Industrial Road, calling its condition “a nightmare.”
Another crew of 12 street department workers took over at 7 p.m. Monday and spent 12 hours patching more of MLK and Wilson avenues as well as Poland and Belmont avenues.
The morning crew was back Tuesday, working from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on MLK (again) and also returned to Gypsy, Early, Southern, Industrial and Salt Springs, and added Hillman Street. The crew stopped at 3 p.m. because of the rain, McKinney said.
The late crew was to start at 11 p.m. Tuesday and work until 7 a.m. today finishing up on those roads and likely adding more, McKinney said.
There is overtime expense for the work, said McNally and McKinney, but they added the work desperately needs to get done.
Overtime for filling in potholes round the clock is about $3,000 a day, McKinney said.
The cold-patching work could take five to 20 days, which would cost the city about $15,000 to $60,000, he said.
The administration’s proposed 2015 street department budget includes $515,000 in overtime with a total budget of $4,597,000. City council has to approve a budget for this year by the end of March.
Last year’s street department budget was $4,176,000 with $513,000 of it spent on overtime pay.
The street department is using a cold patch of asphalt to fill in holes — a very short-term improvement, McKinney said.
But the hot-patch asphalt plant from where the city buys that material opens March 30, and roads will start to be hot-patched that day, McNally said.
A hot patch is more of a long-term solution but can’t be used in low temperatures, he said.
“The cold patch is to minimize damage until the hot patch is ready,” McNally said.
MLK between Rayen and Belmont avenues is one of the worst roads in the city. For the past two months, numerous eastbound motorists choose to drive in the westbound lane and face oncoming traffic because the potholes are so bad. Now, the westbound lane, which was in bad shape, is even worse.
“MLK will be repaved [around mid-May], so we’re cold-patching it, and we’ll have to grin and bear it until then,” McNally said.