Staff urge restarting alley fixes
Public Works crews could revive program to level, fill in potholes in alleys
LANSDALE >> Borough council and staff have heard the complaints about the state of alleys around town, and are considering a big change.
“What I am proposing is that we look at restarting our routine alley maintenance program,” said Borough Manager John Ernst.
Wear and tear on the town’s roads and alleys has been discussed at length in recent years, focusing at first on in 2016-17 on whether switching to a single trash hauler in town would reduce damage to streets and alleys. The town’s IT staff have created color-coded and interactive online maps showing today’s conditions and future road re
pairs around town, and discussed how to better publicize that information to the public.
In March, Angelichio had asked staff to examine whether franchise fees could help draw more revenue for repairs by imposing added costs for companies like trash haulers that cause damage to roadways. That idea was shot down by the town’s solicitor in June, but not before a resident asked council in May to consider what options they had for upgrades on alleys.
Ernst told council’s administration and finance committee on July 3 that he, staff, and the town’s solicitor may have found one possible answer, after looking back at how the town had handled alleys in the past.
“In the past, even the more recent past, the borough did undertake a routine alley maintenance program. That program, probably within the past five years, has stopped under the threat of lawsuit,” Ernst said.
“The investment from the borough, in terms of staffing, was a crew that spent most of their time running equipment through the alley son a regular basis. That was their scheduled work day: that’s what they were charged with doing,” he said.
That crew would start at one end of an alley, remove all trash cans and other obstructions, then drive a grader through and scrape the surface of the alley, pushing all loose stone off to either side. Crew would then shovel the piles of stone back into the alley, filling in any holes, and afterward a roller would come back through the alley to flatten it all out, Ernst said.
“That was the maintenance program: primarily to scrape the crown off of the center, and to fill in any potholes that had formed over the previous year,” he said.
Staff and the solicitor have said that the extra cost for that alley maintenance program was minimal, just the costs of the crushed stone mix needed to fill in the potholes. Doing so caused no extra costs for staff time, Ernst told the committee, but did take crews away from other work elsewhere.
“The investment, and the time for staff, was built into the budget, because that was their routine,” he said.
That maintenance program stopped about five years ago because of the threat of a lawsuit regarding the potential trip and fall hazard within the alley, which is technically private property and not a borough road, according to the manager. State courts have ruled in recent years that if a town does not ordain or take ownership of an alley within 21 years after it has been created, it then becomes owned by the adjacent property owners, he said.
“But nobody’s deed, in any of the municipalities, was gone back and re-assessed to add that additional ten feet” to the center of the alley, Ernst said.
“Your deed, if you have an alley, will not say (the property line) goes to the center (of the alley). It will go to the edge of your property, which is what your parcel number and assessment value is based on. Your assessment is not based on the additional ten feet of alley — that is an assumed right-of-way,” he said.
During internal talks, Ernst said, the borough’s solicitor has said that the town and council “are not taking on any more or any less liability if we were to start this routine maintenance program again.”
“The borough does have the right to go into an alley and perform routine maintenance to make the alleys passable. And we also have the ability to lien property owners to recoup the cost of the maintenance,” he said.
“I am not proposing we do (liens) — we did not before, we are not now, although we do have the right to do that,” Ernst said.
If a resident takes the town to court over the condition of the alleys, Ernst said, Lansdale’s legal liability may still exist, but the maintenance program could show the town is working to solve the problems, and remove those unsafe conditions.
“We’re either going to get sued for doing something, or for not doing something,” Council President Denton Burnell said.
Both said residents should be clear that no paving will be involved, just scraping, shoveling and grading.
“We’re not trying to make the alleys perfect. Our goal is to make the alleys passable,” Ernst said.
Maintaining a passable condition can be considered routine maintenance since borough electric vehicles use the alleys on a regular basis to get to poles and other equipment, he said. In previous years, Ernst told the committee, the Public Works crew was able to do that type of maintenance repair to every borough in town over the course of a summer, and while there monetary cost is minimal, other projects could become a lower priority.
“We would just be shifting the responsibility of what they’re doing now, such as rebuilding some sewer inlets, and things like that,” Ernst said.
Burnell pointed out that those functions may not always be highly visible to the public, but some are, like the decorative banners recognizing local veterans that Public Works staff hang around town each spring.
“Hanging the Hometown Hero banners might take longer, or things like that,” he said. “I want us to hang the Hometown Hero banners, it’s just an example of everything that can be impacted by restarting this program.”
Staff have identified between ten and 15 total miles of alleys in the borough that could qualify for that program, Ernst told the committee. In prior years they have been able to do at least one pass of every alley in town over the course of a year, proceeding by doing fixes in certain sections of town at once.
Councilman Leon Angelichio said he was supportive of the maintenance program starting, but said he thought communication with residents will be key, so expectations are managed.
“I hope it’s as simple as just taking some trucks down a road and fixing it. What I don’t want to see this spiral into is, ‘Hey, you just fixed my alley yesterday, and it’s messed up again, come back today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,’” he said.
“If we focus on the alleys, the fervor is going to change. There’s going to be an uproar, because not everybody has an alley,” he said.
Council member Carrie Hawkins Charlton said she thought restarting the maintenance on alleys was “long overdue,” and said she sees drivers cut through her neighborhood via alleys to avoid traffic elsewhere.
“It’s frustrating, to say the least. In past years, I would guess our alleys were touched once every three or four years,” she said.
“I would assume all of the residents would be appreciative, and say ‘Hey, this is great,’” Hawkins Charlton said, and Ernst replied “You would hope.”
Ernst said the first year may not see the entire town covered, or take longer than subsequent years, because of the backlog of maintenance, but once every alley is addressed once, staff would have the flexibility to schedule future visits based on conditions.
“If we have the ability to go out there, and scrape, and drop stone, and keep potholes to a minimum, before they start to grow and become lakes — then at least we’re ahead of the game, in a certain way,” Ernst said.
Angelichio asked if the town had the right to impose speed limits on the alleys for large vehicles driving through. Ernst said he thought that could only be done on public roadways, but would research further.
“It is unbelievably impactful. An increase in speed is an exponential increase in damage to these alleys, in particular with a soft surface,” Angelichio said.
“If you get a car going five miles an hour versus ten miles and hour, it’s not double the damage, it’s an exponential increase,” he said.
Both the administration and finance and public works committees discussed the alley maintenance program on July 3, and Ernst said while staff could restart the program without formal approval from council, he’d like a formal vote to do so.
“That way we can get it memorialized, that the program either will, or will not, start depending on how council votes,” Ernst said.
Borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on July 17 at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St.