Oroville council increases road repair budget for summer

OROVILLE — Oroville City Councilors approved a number of items Tuesday, including a boost to the Public Works Department road maintenance budget for light crack repair work on city roads.

The council budgeted $200,000 to its Public Works Department maintenance fund to address “tweener” projects for the city to do, rather than pay for contract work.

Public Works Manager

Wade Atteberry said the city’s new “hot asphalt” machine can be used to fill in crack fatigues — or “alligatoring” — on roads, which improves lifespan by up to seven years and saves money for the city.

Wade said major projects like Washington Avenue will soon be completely redone, but in the meantime can use crack repairs to improve its lifespan.

Work on priority roads identified by the department include Oroville Dam Boulevard

East and Washington

Fifth, Nelson and Lower Wyandotte avenues — but the list is not set in stone, according to Atteberry.

Atteberry said the roads considered for crack repair won’t require any engineering or planning contracts, and the budgeted funds will go directly to road repairs.

Also on Tuesday, the council voted to approve additional changes to its city charter in advance of placing the item on November’s ballot for election.

City Administrator Brian Ring said a committee worked on revising a second draft of the city charter from its first review March 5 — a majority of the changes are toward Article 8 for the City’s Council’s right to subpoena documents and testimony for proceedings; and

Article 22 for the process of appointing department heads. Ring said many articles of the city charter were merged and deleted for “clunky and outdated” language, like having a baseball commission.