By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
The city of Hays has laid out plans for a little more than $1 million in annual street maintenance during 2022.
City commissioner Shaun Musil is concerned about the stability of product prices.
"With everything that's going up in our world right now, is this attainable?" Musil wondered.
Jesse Rohr, public works director, said he has seen a few product price increases this year but expects the biggest impact next year "will probably be just getting the product, even more so than the cost."
"We have noticed with [recent] repair parts on equipment, if we can get them, it takes awhile.
"We'll structure our bids accordingly," Rohr told city commissioners during their Thursday night work session.
"We're hoping to get a lot for our dollars again [next] year."
The street maintenance projects are primarily funded through special highway funds.
The plan is based on the pavement maintenance strategies in place for more than 14 years. It includes seal coat, polypatch, major rehab (street and concrete alley), bridge deck repair, sidewalk improvements, and in-house crack seal and asphalt/concrete repair.
A pavement condition assessment will be performed in early 2022.
The major project planned for 2022 is reconstruction of 22nd Street from Vine to Allen, according to Rohr.
"There are lots of areas of poly-patch on this street. We have lots of failures every year, especially after winter.
"It's a highly traveled street so we do want to reconstruct that. Our estimate was roughly $210,000. It will be replaced with concrete. We'll do the street and then any areas of curb and gutter as needed."
Bids for the proposed work will be solicited and brought back to commissioners for approval early next year.
Mason Ruder, vice-mayor, asked about the impact of the recently passed federal infrastructure bill which includes $110 billion for U.S. roads and bridges.
Rohr said city staff has had internal discussions about the monies.
"We are planning on preparing some larger reconstruction projects for use of funds if funds trickle down our way. We have a 10-year plan with at least 10 different projects besides what you see here. They'd be more full reconstruction projects of half a million to three million dollars.
"We want to be prepared and maybe even get some projects on the shelf."
Toby Dougherty, city manager, said the federal guidelines for the rules and the monies are to be written within 30 to 60 days.
"Nothing will be certain until then," Dougherty said. "We do think that a lot of it is gonna go through the state agencies, KDOT and KDHE, directing us on how to handle that.
"We're trying to prepare ourselves for it."