Preserving, prioritizing streets of Shelton

Olympic Highway North, last repaired in the 1990s, is "shattered," says City of Shelton Public Works Director Jay Harris.

At an Oct. 22 study session devoted to city's pavement preservation program, Harris told the Shelton City Council, "You can tell about every 20 feet you hit a crack, another crack, another crack, every 20 feet or so you go ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump, when you're going down the road, there's what's called the old market road is laying under there."

He added, "We can't let roads get to that condition again, especially on these major collectors. We have to get to them sooner so they don't cost so much and we were lucky to get a grant for a significant amount of money for that."

The city received $5.1 million in grants to fix Olympic Highway North. The challenge is to prioritize the repair, rehabilitation and replacement of city streets with the money available, Harris said. "We want to stay out of extensive, expensive repairs," he said.

"It's like the roof of your house," he said. "If the shingles start looking old, then you get a leak here and there, you've got to replace the roof, right? The same thing with pavement - you've got to stay on it."

At the study session, Harris released the findings on the new Pavement Condition Index study. The overall rating for city streets was 69 out of 100 in 2020 and has improved to 72 this year, he said.

The improvement "is good news," Harris said. "It means the investment that we've been making in our system is working. A lot of this is the street crew getting out and really staying on these things ... For most agencies, that's a good number and try to improve on it."

The challenge now is ranking street repairs and rehabilitations to maintain that level, Harris said. Harris told the council that to maintain the PCI at 72 will require about $10.5 million over the next five years.

"We don't have $2.1 million a year coming in from the (Transportation Benefit District taxes) and the general fund," Harris said. The city will need to leverage grant-funded projects, complete self-performed projects, and seek joint projects with Mason County, he said. The state is generous in giving grants to the city, he added.

The city has about 54 centerline miles of paved streets and about five miles of gravel roadways. The replacement value is about $140 million.

The best bang for the buck is tackling streets before water gets into the cracks and high volume of traffic wears it down, Harris said.

"The (streets rated) very good, good and fair are the pavements that we need to catch before they turn to poor," he said.

Harris detailed the types of repairs, rehabilitations and replacements the city performs on its streets.

"Crack sealing is the least expensive treatment," he said. "It prevents a lot of the underlying moisture from getting into the base rock."

He continued, "You crack seal first to take care of the big cracks, then you hit it with a fog seal. It seals microcracks, the hairlines, the things you can't see and preserves that pavement surface a little longer."

The city doesn't use slurry seal much because it doesn't add structural substance to streets, Harris said. The city does use chip seal, pavement overlay, and pavement grinding and overlay. In 2018, Turner Avenue received full depth replacement.

"That was a full-depth replacement where we went in, dug out the whole roadway, put in new base rock and put in new pavement. Very expensive."

In the past five years, the city has performed paving projects on more than 4 miles of streets.

The TBD taxes expire next year. The city can choose to try to continue the TBD taxes by placing a renewal before city voters on the November 2025 ballot, Harris said. The city could ask for the continuation of a tax of .0.2%.