Smart Seeks Paving Power

As a new crop of insurgent legislators takes power in City Hall, one lawmaker is looking to wrest control of two major aldermanic deliverables from the mayor’s office — street paving and sidewalk repair.

Wooster Square’s Alderman Mike Smart said Tuesday night that he’s working on a bill that would change the way street paving is done in the city. He said he’d like to take the annual budget for paving and sidewalk repair and simply divide it by 30, with an equal portion going to each of the city’s 30 wards. Each alderman would then decide what streets and sidewalks in her ward should be paved with her portion of the budget.

That would be a change from the current practice, in which street-paving and sidewalk-repair decisions are made solely by the city administration.

Smart said his plan would ensure street paving funds are distributed fairly and would prevent sidewalk and street repair from becoming a political tool to reward or punish aldermen for their support for — or disagreement with — the mayor.

Informed of the Smart’s proposal, Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts said he shares the alderman’s concerns regarding equal distribution of funds. But he said the plan is problematic given the unequal distribution of streets, traffic, and potholes in the city. Smuts promised to work with aldermen to come up with a plan that’s both fair and feasible.

Smuts said street paving may have been a political tool years ago, but it hasn’t been one under his watch.

Smuts said recent city budgets have included about $750,000 per year for sidewalk repair and about a $1 million for street paving.

Alderman Smart said legislative staff are working on his idea now and he hopes to have an ordinance amendment proposal ready for the next aldermanic meeting. The matter will be considered by a board with the largest group of freshman in the city’s history, according to newly elected board President Jorge Perez. The majority of the newcomers — sworn in on Jan. 1 — are part of a union-affiliated slate of candidates elected with the help of organized labor, defeating a group of contenders backed by the mayor.

Getting potholes filled and crumbling sidewalks repaired are the bread and butter of the constituent services neighbors seek from their aldermen. Smart said the administration has been known to hold back on repairs in selected wards in order to make certain aldermen appear ineffective to their constituents.

“It’s known that politics have always been played with the sidewalks and streets,” Smart said. He said it hasn’t happened to him in his ward.

Smart said his plan would empower the board leadership — the president, president pro tempore, and majority leader — to make sure the city divides the paving and sidewalk repair budget 30 ways between the aldermen.

“To me, it’s a no-brainer,” Smart said.

Smuts saw it as more complicated. ​“I don’t know that that would work in practice,” he said.

He raised a number of concerns about Smart’s plan.

For one, sidewalk repair can be expensive. Dividing the annual budget 30 ways might leave each alderman with too little money to repair anything, Smuts said. He said it might be better to alternate years, so that 15 aldermen would divide half the total one year and the other 15 would divide it the next.

Smuts also raised the issue of ​“radically different amounts of roads in different wards.” Wards also see very different amounts of traffic, he said. For instance, Morris Cove probably has more miles of streets than other wards, but fewer cars traveling them. Whereas downtown and Yale probably have fewer roads but a larger portion of the city’s traffic.

“There’s also the question of existing conditions,” Smuts said. In Mike Smart’s Ward 8, for example, streets were recently repaved because of a sewer separation project, Smuts said. ​“That’s not true in other wards.”

Smuts said the ​“overall goal” of equal distribution of paving funds is ​“something most people could agree on.” How it could work best in practice can be worked out in committee, he said.

Smuts said he’s worked to make the paving-project selection process more objective and transparent since he became CAO in 2007. In Dec. 2009, the city hired an outside consultant to do a road-condition survey. Each city street was given a score of 0 to 100, with 60 being a ​“passing grade.” The city now uses the results of the survey as a central tool in road-repair triage.

The city’s website has a map and a spreadsheet showing all the streets in the city and their ratings.

“It costs maybe $13 to $15 per square yard to do a full mill and pave,” Smuts said. If the city were to mill and pave only those roads with a failing grade of below 60, it would cost $12 million, he said.

In general, the city paves the worst roads first, but it also takes other factors into account, like how much traffic a road sees, Smuts said. A road that isn’t terribly damaged can be treated with a ​“skim coat,” which costs only $5 per square yard and could last 12 to 15 years on a lightly traveled road, Smuts said.

The city also tries to ​“have some geographic distribution” around the city when it comes to street repair, Smuts said.

Smuts accepted Smart’s charge that street paving has been a political process historically, perhaps over 20 years ago. ​“I would say that in years past, there’s probably a lot of truth to that. I’d say in the couple of years that I’ve been CAO I’ve worked really hard to put objective criteria for where we’ve paved. That’s why we did the survey and put this stuff up” on the website.

Smuts said he’ll continue to work to make street paving an ​“objective” process.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” he said. ​“And I welcome collaboration on that.”

Smuts later said the city charter states that aldermen shall have control over the city streets, a point that Smart had also made. Smuts referred to Sec. 45, which states, in part, ​“Said board of aldermen is hereby authorized to order, lay out, construct, repair and alter public squares, parks, streets, highways, sewers, gutters, drains, bridges and walks, except as herein otherwise provided, when and where, in the opinion of said board, the public good shall so require, and to order the paving, macadamizing or other improvement of any street, alley or highway within said city.”

“They have the legal authority, it seems pretty clear, to tell DPW which streets to pave,” Smuts said. ​“It does not mandate a certain way of doing that, however, so the board can establish the procedure that makes the most sense operationally.”