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Beaver City plans chip seal, grader patching and equipment purchases to speed road repairs
Summary
Public works staff presented a multi-item road maintenance plan that pairs grader patching with chip seal, recommended buying a roller and trailer to lower contractor costs, and proposed targeted projects including Center Street and hospital-area coating.
Public works staff told the Beaver City Council that a combination of in-house grader patching and contracted chip sealing will address the most damaged streets this year and recommended purchasing a compaction roller and a tilt-deck trailer to reduce recurring contractor costs.
Staff said full removal and repaving of a block costs about $60,000; in-house grader patching followed by chip seal reduces that to roughly $7,600 per block in asphalt load costs (the staff's estimate based on seven loads at about $1,100 per load). "If we tore it out, milled it out, wrote a base compact, repaved... we're over $50,000. We're about $60,000 per block," a roads official said. "With the grader... for a block, you're about $7,600." The staff described grader patching as a cost-effective interim approach on roads that are not ready for complete reconstruction.
The schedule proposed chip sealing in August after grader patching and recommended an immediate half-load of asphalt for a few high-need patches. Staff highlighted roads on Center Street, 500 East to the swimming pool, 800 East, 900 East, 600 East and neighborhood connectors as priorities. They also recommended addressing shoulder work citywide and replacing two fire hydrants per year.
Equipment needs were emphasized. Staff recommended buying a roller (new units cost around $100,000; used units about $50,000) and a tilt-deck trailer to transport heavy equipment and the roller. Staff said borrowing the county roller has been useful but unreliable: "One of the needs I was gonna talk about is we do need our own roller," the public-works presenter said, adding that owning a roller would pay back in under three years compared with repeated rentals.
Staff also reviewed lower-cost surface treatments. They recommended SILCO (a spray-applied surface coat) for the new hospital road to extend pavement life; a 16- to 17-thousand-dollar estimate was cited to cover both the hospital access road and a short connector.
Council members praised the more visible results of recent work and directed staff to proceed with patching, prepare chip seal bidding and return with equipment procurement cost estimates and storage plans. The council also discussed pursuing funding programs for larger rebuilds, including future reconstruction of Porter Subdivision and the Highway 357 project in 2026.
