City of Tacoma Public Works street maintenance crew Russ Stone, left, and Erik Sloan, right, fill the potholes with a patching material on S. Hosmer Street near the S. 72nd Street in Tacoma. The city is facing the snow removal costs and pothole problems arising in the aftermath of the recent snow storm. (Lui Kit Wong/The News Tribune) (1/2/09)

Message received.

In response to a public outcry, City Manager Eric Anderson unveiled a plan to council members on Tuesday that aims to fix virtually all of the city’s potholes on its main arterials by this summer.

Anderson scoured the city’s capital budget and came up with $4.2 million to pay for the work, which will include a combination of individual pothole patches, wheel path replacements and some complete lane replacements.

The manager, who has spent most of his career in colder climes of the Midwest, called Tacoma’s current pothole trouble beyond the scale of what cities usually encounter. He blamed the dire road conditions on a combination of “failing streets and a much, much harder winter,” than last year.

Council members cautioned against raising expectations too high: The plan does not address the city’s residential streets. A separate program is funding gradual repair of the city’s the long-neglected residential streets.

In addition, the plan stops short of funding all of the arterial lanes that city officials identified as needing replacement. Anderson said he found money for 86 percent of the needed lane-width replacements.
And officials said the city has identified an additional $65 million in maintenance and repair work needed just on arterial streets.

Even so, council members – who hear from irate motorists – welcomed the manager’s announcement.

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“A lot of our streets are in terrible shape,” Councilman Jake Fey said. “It’s just unbelievable.”
Councilwoman Marilyn Strickland asked for clarification about the goal. Does it “literally mean every single pothole on every street will be fixed?”

Public Works Director Dick McKinley said he would not stake his life to it. “New ones happen all the time,” he said. “Our roads need help. We will do the darned best we can to get to 100 percent.”

Funding for the effort will come at the expense of other projects in the city’s capital budget. The biggest chunk, $2 million, will come from a fund that officials set aside to acquire property at downtown’s North Park garage.

The city budgeted $2.8 million for property acquisition, but the redevelopment of the building will take longer than originally anticipated, Anderson said.

Another $1 million will come from deferred maintenance projects planned for the Tacoma Municipal Building.

Although repairs at the aging art-deco building are important, Anderson said he considered the streets a more pressing emergency.

Anderson said the city will use $700,000 of the $1.2 million that was set aside for right-of-way beautification. And $500,000 that was budgeted for work at the County-City Building was freed up when the city transferred its ownership share of the building to Pierce County.

McKinley said the work would be divided into three types: Individual pothole repair; wheel path replacement; and lane-width replacement.

The biggest jobs, replacing entire lanes, will be contracted to private companies, and city employees will do the other work, McKinley said.

Approximately $650,000 of additional funding would allow the city to replace all of the lanes that have been identified, according to city officials.

Connie Ladenburg suggesting dipping into the council’s contingency fund, which she said has an estimated $3.5 million.

“It’s so close, and our streets are in such need,” Ladenburg said, adding, “I know if we don’t do it, we’ll hear about those potholes that don’t get fixed.”

Other council members cautioned against using money from using reserve funds during the recession.

City workers will begin working on the individual potholes and wheel lane replacements right away, McKinley said. The projects that will be done by private contractors should be under way by summer, he said.