Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
City board members discuss accelerating street projects
SILOAM SPRINGS — Street maintenance and street projects were addressed by the city board during the goal setting meeting May 14.
The board focused on two aspects of the goal — finding a way to put more money into street funds to complete more projects and reviewing the street repair and sidewalk repair plan to see if it can be accelerated.
Mayor John Turner said if the Arkansas Transportation Sales Tax Continuation Amendment doesn’t pass the city could lose $300,000 to $400,000 in street money from the state.
This proposed amendment will allow voters to decide whether to continue a half-cent sales tax for road improvements, according to ArDot.gov. The tax has been in place since 2013 and is set to expire in 2023. A yes vote would make the tax permanent. It will be voted on during the Nov. 3 general election.
Patterson said street turnback money, which is received from the state and county, could be lower because people are driving and buying less because of the pandemic.
Turnback money is a proportional share of gasoline taxes by the state and a proportional share of sales and use taxes collected by the state and county, Patterson said
“That pot of money is going to be less than they usually have for us,” Patterson said.
Patterson also said there were internal concerns about census numbers. He said Siloam Springs is growing but so are other cities in Benton County, and if they grow at a higher rate, then the city will likely receive less money.
Director Carol Smiley brought up the idea of reviewing the street plan and sidewalk plan when the directors were submitting the initial 58 goals for consideration because of comments she heard from residents about wanting street and sidewalk repair or more sidewalks. Patterson said the city does this every three years.
“That was always the goal,” Patterson said. “(We) adopt it, work on it for three years and then bring it back to the board with an updated plan as far as the next three years worth of projects.”
Director Marla Sappington said she was thinking every street needed to be looked at annually to see if maybe there’s a pothole needing to be fixed.
Patterson said the idea of the street plan was to look at all streets every three years and see which ones are going to need to be heavily repaired. The streets marked for repair are overlaid, by using this method it helps the city budget for the repairs, Patterson said. Accelerating street projects would mean more money to be spent, he said.
“You can’t just do all repairs because we have to keep overlaying these streets that are in decent condition,” Patterson said.
Director Brad Burns said he would like to see road projects go to private contractors instead of the Street Department. Burns pointed to the work at Memorial Park as an example of how private contractors can do excellent work.
Burns recommended using the Street Department to do basic maintenance, such as filling potholes, but for major construction jobs the director would like to see it go to private contractors.
“I think the hard part as a board to look at is to (say) ‘that program is not working its full potential,’” Burns said. “Will we do more with the taxpayer dollar going to the private sector on our streets?”
Patterson said if the city gets a couple of million in public street money and $1 million a year in projects, this will represent the cost of equipment and asphalt.
“You could reduce some of that overhead cost and have more money go to projects but as you do more private contractor projects the cost of these projects increases to a certain degree,” Patterson said.
Patterson said when he arrived the city had budgeted money and was buying equipment to build its own street construction program and asked the question is it more cost effective to complete these projects in house or to contract it out. Burns said it is a conversation that the city needs to have.
Patterson said the city will have to go project by project. Turner cited the Kenwood Street repairs and said it probably would have come out just as good or better if the city didn’t build it themselves. Patterson said Kenwood was likely a bigger bite for the Street Department.
“What we do internally is we every year (when) we are doing budgets … We’re looking at what can we do? What can we accomplish?” Patterson said.
Patterson said the city can build streets and cited North Simon Sager Avenue as an example. He also said Kenwood had its share of challenges, primarily with utilities and drainage which took forever and took the city away from other projects because the Street Department had to put all of its resources into it.
In the end Patterson said the city may have to do a better job of saying some projects are too big for them to do.
The board cast an informal vote to put street projects on the list of goals to focus on for 2021-2022 in May and formally added it to the list in July.