Street paving project progressing quickly

Wednesday afternoon Blevins Asphalt started paving the streets included in the 2003 street improvement program and by Monday afternoon they will have finished with the streets that do not need new curbs and gutters. They will return to town later this summer to pave the streets that need curbs and gutters installed, with all of the streets expected to be finished by August 31. Each year about $400,000 of street improvements are made and are paid for with the city's one-half cent transportation sales tax that Nevada voters renewed for an additional five years in 2003. Thursday evening the city's infrastructure and street committee spent an hour discussing the streets to be included in the 2004 street improvement program. Each year the committee tries to include one long stretch of one street like the section of north Washington from Hunter to Atlantic street, which was resurfaced Thursday. "We need a street like Maple north of Austin Boulevard," Dr. Ben Mendenhall told the committee. Mendenhall has been a stalwart member of the committee since it was first instituted and is proud of the miles of street that have been improved over the past six years. In a discussion relating to the streets on the list of possible projects for next year, the committee tentatively decided to resurface and install about 4,800 feet of new curbs and gutters on west Cherry Street between Chestnut and Tower streets. The scope of the street work is limited not only by the $400,000 budgeted each year for the work but by the total footage of streets that need to have new curbs and gutters installed. Sherrie Stewart, who oversees the street program for the city, told the committee that there are limits to how many feet of curb and guttering that city crews can do the preparation work for each. During the past winter and spring they were able to prepare about 9,500 feet of street for new curbing. If the streets only need to be resurfaced the major limit is the amount of money available. Thursday evening, the committee members started with a list of possible streets for resurfacing with a total of 24,000 feet needing new curbing and after much discussion pared that down to around 14,000 feet of curbing and decided they need to have a list of additional streets that do need new curbing to pick from. "We're running out of streets with curbing that are in bad shape," Stewart said.