City of Yuma aims to upgrade 1,000,000 square yards of local roads
Public Works gets twice the funding to do double the usual job - News 11's Adonis Albright pounds the pavement for the story
YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - The City of Yuma recently launched its Spring Pavement Preservation Program. City crews are conducting routine road maintenance across the north, west and east sides of the city to make sure the roads are smooth and looking good.
Crews typically perform maintenance twice a year, once in the Spring and again in the Fall. This time around, however, the city is upping the ante. Yuma's City Council allotted more than double the amount of funds, roughly $2 million, to go toward road preservation for fiscal year 2020.
Michael Flowers is the Public Works Manager for the city of Yuma. He tells News 11 the increased budget will allow them to more than double the amount of roads they typically do every year.
“Our goal was to do 10% of our infrastructure, that’s about 40 miles per year. In fiscal year 20, we are going to cover one million square yards, which is actually 45 miles… Because our budget was increased from [the city] council, previous to that we were only doing 23 miles in a year", said Flowers.
That's good news for residents in Cibola Heights. Erick Nuñez has lived in the area for more than a decade. As a local and contractor himself, he's glad to see the city is touching up his neighborhood.
“Very glad that they’re doing this, because these streets, especially coming in on the corner here, there’s a lot of pedestrian traffic from kids mainly", said Nuñez.
Nuñez' neighbor, Shannon Whitt, moved into the neighborhood a little under a year ago. He's excited his kids will get to play without having to worry about cracks in the road.
“It’s going to be great because the roads are going to be super smooth and they love to ride their skateboards and bikes and everything, and so it’s going to be a great thing that they fix them because it’s going to be smooth for them", said Whitt.
Crews will be laying down slurry seal, which is a "mixture of asphalt emulsion, aggregate (small crushed rock), and water to an existing pavement surface that aids in extending the life and quality of our roads."
This will then be followed up with an oil seal, which will further preserve the roads and lengthen their lifespan.
“We’re putting this thicker product down and I think that it’s working very nicely... In general we are sealing these roads much nicer, they look great. The contractors actually roll in the pavement so that helps with the drying process and the compaction, and just the overall look, and hopefully it’ll stay anywhere from 4 to 8 years depending on what type of road it is and where the traffic’s coming from", said Flowers.
Crews are expected to continue working through May, between the hours of 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Some work will be done overnight. The city has laid out a timeline to see show the public which areas they're covering, and when. To see if your street will be next in line, head to the city's website.
