West Memphis sets 2017 street overlay plans

West Memphis sets 2017 street overlay plans

Heavy focus around city schools this year

news@theeveningtimes.com

Annual street overlay plans were reviewed by West Memphis Public Works during the June meeting. Bids are set to go out soon with work slated soon afterward because many of the targeted spots are near schools. The public works departments wants things smoothed over before back to school time.

The West Memphis Public Schools have been on a tear adding onto buildings in recent years. The Marion School District gave its Avondale School in West Memphis a facelift too.

Some of the construction traffic ruffed up the streets by these schools. The summer asphalt overlays are designed to smooth out the finishing touches around the beautifully updated school buildings before students resume classes in the late summer.

The same logic put south 9th and 11th streets on the overlay map too. Drainage ditch maintenance is underway on those streets using block grant development funds. The Community Development Block Grant money will get the ditches draining, some new culverts placed and new driveway aprons as needed along the two streets. After that a brand new black top will finish off the improvements.

“It will be good news for the folks along south ninth and eleventh,” said Ward 5 Councilman Willis Mondy.

“Some folks there don’t realize all that is being done.

They are complaining about a mess, rocks in the driveway and the road right now, but when its all finished it will be real nice with the overlay.”

The streets around the new Bragg Elementary, Avondale and Richland school buildings will get adjacent overlays as well.

“The street in front of Maddux Elementary was overlaid a couple of years ago and still looks pretty good,” said Public Works Administrative Assistant Rhonda Standridge as she presented the map to the board.

Roselawn south of Center will round out the scheduled work. It was a secondary street left over from 2016.

The street smoothing strategy this year departed from planning strategy for street overlay projects in recent years. One past practice was to overlay a little in each ward. Then as a cost saving measure work was loaded up in one area to save on expenses of moving form place to place.

This stretched out the distance saved and benefited the east and southeast sides of the city in particular.

Now this year the focus shifts to provide finishing touches after big civic construction projects.

“I think it will look really good,” said Public Works Chairman and Ward 3 Councilor Ramona Taylor.

By John Rech