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Commissioners press city on potholes and road repairs as DPW explains limits
Summary
Commissioners and residents pressed the city on pothole repairs and street resurfacing; DPW described cold patching, a mastic tar product, a new hot-patcher machine, crew sizes and constraints from closed pavement plants, and noted MDOT reimburses work on state trunk lines.
Residents and commissioners spent substantial time at the March 16 Bay City City Commission meeting pressing the city for clearer plans on road repairs and pothole mitigation.
Multiple residents raised problems including collapsed sewers and extensive potholes; Jack Wallace and Dustin Kosick urged the commission to prioritize infrastructure over other controversies. Commissioner Coakley and others asked the city manager and DPW when more permanent repairs would begin.
Bob Dionne of the Department of Public Works described current repair methods: crews have applied cold patching and, when weather permits, a stored blacktop that is reheated in a hot patcher; the city also uses a mastic (tar-based) product with aggregate for certain applications and a recently purchased mastic machine. He said pavement plants that supply hot mix remain closed until roughly mid-April, limiting the city's ability to perform larger resurfacing projects. Dionne said the street department currently staffs roughly 10 employees and organizes crews of about four for patching and repairs: "We got 10 guys in [the] street department," he said.
Dionne and the city manager noted that MDOT reimburses the city for repairs on state trunk lines and that budgetary limits and seasonal plant openings constrain when and how permanent work can be scheduled. Commissioners asked for a presentation on the year's pavement plan (TAMP) and discussed the trade-offs between funding large reconstruction projects and doing more frequent smaller resurfacing work.
No new funding decisions were made at the meeting; commissioners discussed potential policy options, including revisiting project prioritization and whether to consider raising revenue to address the backlog of needed work.
