Bentonville begins in-house overlay program for streets

The Bentonville Street Department recently overlaid two city streets as part of a new inhouse program, an official said.

Crews worked on Southwest Aviation Drive and Southeast Clark Street last week, said Dennis Birge, city transportation director.

Southwest Aviation Drive is east of the Municipal Airport/ Thaden Field. Southeast Clark connects to Southeast 18th Street to the south and to Southeast S Street to the northeast.

Overlay includes milling out 1.5 inches of pavement, then replacing it with new pavement, Birge said.

The goal is to do 10 miles of asphalt overlay this year, with 2 miles done by the Street Department. The number of miles the city could finish might go as high as four as the year moves along, Birge said. The city will contract out the rest of the overlay work as it has done in previous years.

The city has a $1 million budget this year for overlay and pavement preservation, Birge said. The goal is to spend about 20% of that on the inhouse paving operation, he said.

An in-house paving operation is important to stretch budgeted money, he said.

“We are still looking to keep the majority of our budget toward the contracted-out work for pavement preservation and mill/overlay work,” he said. “Our goal is to provide the citizens with maintenance that will extend the life of our existing roadways as well as make strategic improvements that will keep us in close range of the need we see from our current growth. That is a challenge at the current growth rate, so I don’t see us getting away from the contractor overlay work for the foreseeable future.”

The initial setup cost for an in-house paving program was about $1.3 million for a paver, milling machine, tractor-trailer to haul the paver and a roller, Birge said.

It will take about 9½ miles of work to recoup the investment, Birge said.