Works board approves $5M for road work
In response to frequent calls from El Dorado residents, as well as a request from the city council, the El Dorado Works Board approved spending an additional $5 million on road repair in 2020.
That means the city will have six times the amount of money it usually has for road work in 2020. City staff will begin using newly installed equipment installed on city vehicles to gather data on the current state of El Dorado streets. Streets will then be prioritized based on a variety of factors, including condition, current traffic patterns and potential future use.
Public Works Director Robert Edmonds noted that planned work on Highway 82/Hillsboro and North West Ave. could stress streets around those two main arterial roadways with increased traffic.
“We could make improvements to street just outside that corridor,” he said, adding that sewer and water lines will probably need to be worked on underneath some of the streets. “Some of the money could be used planning for those two projects.”
The money is slated to be split evenly between wards, and Edmonds said he would work with city council members on the priority and sequencing of the road repairs. Edmonds noted the cost to overlay a 30 footwide street is $213,000 per mile and $44,000 for cold milling.
The request was initially approved by the El Dorado City Council during their meeting last Thursday, and it didn’t take the works board long to give their stamp of approval.
“The bottom line is that people in this community voted for the tax, and 32% of it goes to infrastructure,” city councilmember Paul Choate, who attended the
meeting, said. “Streets are the most visible part of our infrastructure. The city needs to see this.”
The works board discussed the possibility that it might take the city two years to spend the $5 million on road repairs, depending on how much the weather impacted repair work and the cash flow for the works board.
“I think the challenge is going to be the sequencing of what roads when,” works board chairman Greg Downum said. “Not everybody is going to be completely happy with the sequencing, but just starting helps.”
The board also considered four requests from the airport commission, which will appear in detail in a future News-Times story.
The board listened to a request for $50,000 from the Arkansas Women’s Business Center to form an entrepreneurship program, and a request from Janice Bush of the New Creations Life Center for assistance in purchasing three homes to serve as temporary housing for area homeless. The board did not take action on either request.