City eyes street repair standards

Irregular and uneven surfaces contractors leave in city rights of way are a common complaint fielded by the Hot Springs Board of Directors and city administration, a problem city officials said requires more stringent street cut repair standards than what’s currently enshrined in the city code.

“It doesn’t have enough detail,” City Engineer Gary Carnahan, referring to current standards, told the board. “To implement properly, it requires a lot of explaining and arguing. We’ve written new standard specs with much more detail.”

Revised standards that borrow elements from those used by other cities were presented to the board last month, requirements the city said companies it contracts to work on water and wastewater lines should also be bound by.

“We will hold our water and sewer departments accountable,” Carnahan, responding to questions about the depression traversing Broadway Street’s northbound lane, told the board. “The contractors they hire will have to meet these standards too.”

Street cut repairs like those on Broadway, where an 8-inch water main runs the length of the northbound lane, are prohibited under standards the board has been asked to consider. At least half of a lane will have to be repaved if the pavement is more than three years old, and the whole lane repaved when the pavement is less than three years old.

The city hopes heightened standards will encourage less invasive methods, such as boring instead of cutting, or compel utilities to move their facilities out of city rights of way. The city said it issued 478 street cut permits last year, with 206 issued to contractors working on the city’s regional water and wastewater systems.

“This is probably the single most prolific complaint I get in my office, from all of you, and from citizens who call us,” City Manager David Frasher told the board. “We’ve just been too permissive with these cuts. In some sense, you can’t blame contractors, because they’re going to perform to the standard we’ve put in place.”

The revised standards require repair plans and surety bonds be submitted before permits are issued, with exceptions for emergency work.

“They have to answer questions on the front end before they ever get a permit, not after the work is done,” Carnahan told the board. “The surety bond will be like a guarantee that we will hold for two years. Sometimes patches don’t settle right away. It takes a little time.”

To guard against settling, the new standards mandate that the

8-inch slab contractors place between utility trenches and repaired asphalt extend farther. Instead of the 9 inches dictated by the current standards, slabs will have to extend a foot on either side of trenches.

Traffic control plans will also have to be approved before permits are issued, ensuring proper covering and signage are in place to protect vehicles and direct drivers.

“We need to be more picky and detailed about contractors submitting standard traffic control plans from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices,” Carnahan told the board.

Enforcing the new standards will make more demands on city inspectors, requiring increases in permit application and inspection fees, the city said. It’s proposed increasing the $25 application fee to $50 and assessing a minimum

$100 inspection fee. Instead of a flat $35 fee, inspection costs will be based on the length of the repair work, with 50 cents charged per linear foot on work outside paved areas and sidewalks and $1 per linear foot on work inside paved areas and sidewalks.

The new fee structure is projected to raise $75,000 to $85,000 a year, up from the $36,500 collected in street cut permit and inspection fees last year. Frasher suggested indexing the fees to inflation.

“These standards are not over the top higher than what other cities across the country are doing,” Frasher told the board. “They’re just a lot higher than what we had before.”