Star-Journbal Editor
Neglected for many years, the streets in Hillsboro are in such bad shape that the city's new street superintendent says he doesn't even know where to begin to fix them.
Even if he did know where to start, the street department's equipment is in such disrepair, his crew can't do the work that needs to be done, anyway.
After six weeks on the job, Dale Dalke's perspective on the sorry state of the city's streets came as no surprise to Mayor Delores Dalke.
She echoed his concerns at the Hillsboro City Council's special meeting held July 2.
"We haven't done street work for so many years that everything needs to be done," she said.
With so many streets in need of repair all over town, Dale Dalke wants council members to decide which streets in their districts need to be fixed first, second, and third.
The mayor agreed that the council should decide, saying, "The only way we can have the street department not get blamed for streets not being done is if the council prioritizes it."
Filling cracks and potholes has been high on the council's to-do list for years. But before Dalke (who is distantly related to the mayor) took over in May with a mandate to shape up the street department, untrained city workers repeatedly frustrated council members, and the public, by botching the job.
But the new street super, who has many years of experience building and repairing streets and highways, told the mayor that faulty city equipment was partly to blame.
"The blade they've been trying to use is in extremely poor condition," the mayor said.
"These guys that we have on the street department now want to do a good job and they want to make a difference. But we can't expect them to do a good job if they don't have the equipment."
Rather than turning Hillsboro streets into a quilt of spotty patch jobs, Dale Dalke would prefer to resurface streets with a process called chip sealing. The process involves spraying an asphalt emulsion on the pavement, then spreading a layer of uniformly-sized aggregate chips. The chips are rolled into the asphalt and excess chips are swept up.
The process takes know-how, and the right equipment. But the city's chip sealing machinery is antiquated and broken-down, Dalke said, and replacing the equipment in today's dollars could cost as much as $200,000.
Someone with a possible solution to the problem was present at the July 2 council meeting on another street-related matter. Street contractor Jim Ralston of APAC Kansas suggested that instead of buying its own equipment, his company could provide the equipment and expertise, with city street workers providing the labor.
Similar arrangements worked well in other cities, such as Valley Center, Ralston said.
The council agreed to consider his suggestion, and to give the new superintendent their priority lists of streets in most need of repair. According to the mayor, these streets would include busy thoroughfares such as Main Street, as well as residential streets, such as Floral Drive, and also in Carriage Hills and Willow Glen.
Whichever streets are selected to be fixed first, the mayor wants repairs on the neglected streets to begin soon, before more damage is done.
"If we don't seal these cracks and stuff then all of our streets are going to fall apart, even the ones that we consider pretty good at this point in time," she said.
"We've just neglected them for a long, long time."
In other business,
— The council agreed to share with the Hillsboro Development Corporation the cost to remodel an office at city hall. The office will be the headquarters for HDC's new business incubator and recruitment program, called Hillsboro Ventures, Inc.
Darrell Driggers, a member of the HDC board, introduced Clint Seibel as the new director of Hillsboro Ventures, Inc. For the past decade, Seibel has worked as a fund-raiser at Tabor College.
The city had agreed on a plan to rent office space to HDC in the southwest corner of city hall about a year ago. With Seibel on board as of July 2, Hillsboro Ventures is ready to begin.
Under the agreement with the city, HDC will remodel the interior of the office at its own expense. The city will replace the office's leaky outside windows, at a cost estimated at about $3,000.
At the same time, the council will replace a second set of leaky windows in the office next door.
Driggers said that in addition to the interior design work, HDC is considering putting in a new outside door and awning as well.
The new leader of the new Hillsboro Ventures Program, Seibel, was the director of the Tabor Fund, which has a $1 million a year fund-raising goal.
His new job will be recruiting new and existing businesses to come to Hillsboro.
— In conjunction with Seibel's new role at Hillsboro Ventures, Inc., Mayor Dalke appointed him to serve on the Marion County Economic Development Board.
— The council heard a familiar refrain from city engineer Bob Previtera on the slow progress of the Adams Street renovation project, which has been further delayed by the wet weather.
"We haven't progressed too much since the last time I met with you, so hopefully we'll get that back on track and get the asphalt going over the next week and a half," he said.
According to Previtera, the additional delays should not effect the project's budget.
"We haven't had any overruns to speak of," he said.
— APAC's Ralston said the planned Ash Street improvement project also would be delayed.
"We don't have a lot of work out in front of us, but everything we've got we're about two months behind on because of this weather," Ralston said. "It won't happen before school starts. We've made a lot of commitments for getting [projects done before] schools open and frankly we're not going to make it. I would say this would be a late summer or early fall type job."
The delay will give the council some more time to figure out where it will come up with the money to pay for the street improvement project. At last count, the project estimate had been whittled down to $346,000, still $72,000 over budget.
"We've got some other things we need to pay for out of capital improvements, too," Dalke said.
— The council asked Previtera to begin the zoning process for Phase I of a yet-to-be-named new commercial business park, located at the corner of North Ash Street and U.S.-56, north of the former AMPI building. The area will be zoned highway commercial.
While no names were selected, the council had fun pun-ishing each other with possible names for the park and its two streets.
Mayor Dalke asked, "The other [commercial business park] is Hillsboro Heights, would this one be Hillsboro Lows?"
In light of the new business park's close proximity to the former dairy, council member Shane Marler suggested the streets should be named after cheeses, or ice cream, which were the plant's specialties.
Marler quipped, "We could call this Rocky Road. It would be cheaper to develop."
Another council member said, "We wouldn't have to pave it!"
After learning that the streets would be cul de sacs, Marler said, "That would make it the Court [Quart] of Rocky Road."
— In the mayor's report, Dalke reported some good news on the ongoing effort to estimate the true cost of the fire damage at the former AMPI building.
According to Dalke, two tile ceilings that need to be removed had been inspected and found not to contain asbestos.
The mayor reported that before moving ahead with a planned lease of the building to USD 410, the school board has asked the city to send in a structural engineer to determine how much damage was really done to the building.
Removing the ceilings was necessary before the structural engineer could begin his work.
— The mayor signed a proclamation declaring July 15-21 as Marion County Relay for Life Week.
The annual Relay for Life honors survivors of cancer and recognizes those who have lost their battle. It will be held July 20-21 at Reimer Field on the campus of Tabor College.
