A few years ago the Town Council made a policy decision to make street maintenance a priority on par with public safety when it comes to funding.

This was at a time when streets like Saguaro Boulevard and Shea Boulevard were literally crumbling under the tires of traffic.

Since completion of projects to repave Shea and rebuild Saguaro, the hue and cry from motorists has apparently subsided considerably.

However, the town and its staff is still charged with maintaining additional asphalt on local streets, and keeping up with the aging pavement with available funding is becoming increasingly difficult. This condition has not been improved by a sweep of funding from the state’s Highway User Revenue Fund by the legislature.

Late last year Town Manager Grady Miller, along with Public Works Director Paul Mood, went to the Council to propose using a Tempe consultant to use high-tech equipment to evaluate the pavement on the town streets. The information from this evaluation would help staff make more efficient maintenance decisions.

There is currently a system of zones across town with staff addressing maintenance in each zone from year to year until it is time to start over. According to Mood it is now taking as much as three years to address a single zone and deferring streets in other areas to further deterioration.

“We don’t have the money going forward for mill and overlay and never catch up with maintenance at a condition that residents expect,” Mood said.

Streets that were evaluated as “good” in an engineering survey done in 2009 are now crumbling, according to Mood.

He would like to move to a system where the worst streets received needed maintenance first and would like to have the high-tech evaluation to pursue that.

In November the Town Council balked at funding that survey and delayed a decision until expected feedback related to citizen priorities is received.

Vision Fountain Hills conducted its evaluation of town needs over the past year. Results of that survey indicate that infrastructure maintenance is a high priority among residents, streets specifically are barely mentioned. However, it should be noted that streets are the primary infrastructure the town is responsible for other than facilities. Water and sewer systems are separate entities.

The Times surveyed council members for this story and indications are people are not as upset about street conditions since the Saguaro and Shea work has been finished.

“I have received a number of positive comments after completion of the Shea and Saguaro projects,” Councilman Henry Leger said. “[There are] some concerns regarding neighborhood streets focusing on cracks, ruts and overall cosmetics.”

Mayor Linda Kavanagh indicated her experience has been similar.

“We did get a lot of praise after Saguaro was finished, residents seemed quite satisfied that their vote for the bond was a good decision for the town,” Kavanagh said. “Since Shea and Saguaro are finished, most residents are now focused on their own streets since those are the ones they travel on the most and have to look at every day.

“However, I do occasionally have residents inquiring about the status of Fountain Hills Boulevard.”

Councilman Alan Magazine says he gets very little input about the condition of the streets, but if it does come up in the conversation people do comment about concern for overall conditions.

Magazine said he does not hear complaints about the main traveled streets.

As for how a maintenance schedule should be approached, Magazine favors doing away with zones.

“I feel strongly that a ‘worst is first’ approach is far preferable to a zone approach,” Magazine said. “The political problem I foresee is that everyone in a zone will be happy. But if citizens see that only parts of zones are being improved, and they don’t live in that particular area, they are likely to protest that their particular street is in need of repair also.”

While council members see that data collection in evaluating streets is important, they are less enthusiastic about using high-tech equipment to accomplish that.

“Data collection is important and our staff does the best they can to document each road, when it was built and the history of the maintenance of each road,” Kavanagh said. “That gives us a general, but not exact, indication of what will be needed in the future.”

“A data plan can make a maintenance plan more effective,” Magazine said. “But only if the funding is available to execute the plan. Otherwise it raises expectations unnecessarily.”

Councilman Art Tolis said existing information is sketchy at best.

“The town does not have very good records of street maintenance and past repairs,” Tolis said. “I requested information on this topic after our last Council discussions and learned the records are very poor.

“It is important that staff collect data on road conditions by site examination and input from independent experts.

“I personally reached out to a local paving firm and the owner had offered to provide input for free.

“This is the type of cooperation and collaboration we need. We are not is a position to spend hundreds of thousands on more studies.”

The proposal the council was asked to consider in November was an agreement for $106,245, with another $67,000 for subsurface evaluation. The company would update the initial studies on an annual basis for $6,000 per year.

The council will discuss the pavement management plan further at upcoming meetings for budget planning and possible study session dedicated to that subject.