City's Asphalt Zipper Sits Idle

City Council's budget planning is aimed at high priority areas.  One of those is city streets.   Executive Director of Public Works Shane Kelton offered an internal road resurfacing crew to Council as an option in a 2022 budget session.

The City of San Angelo website states:

After decades of deferred maintenance, San Angelo’s streets earned a pavement condition index of 45.9 on a 100-point scale in a 2015 Fugro Roadware study.

That was seven years ago.   In December 2016 city management recommended Council approve the $1.2 million purchase of  a Benedetti machine to resurface streets.  That project failed miserably and the city returned the equipment to the manufacturer in January 2019.  

The city purchased an asphalt milling machine (asphalt zipper) in 2005.  It has 102 hours of use over 17 years.  That's six hours a year.  Most of that use came from loaning the asphalt zipper to the City of Fredericksburg in 2016.  

In preparation for the Milam Street Reconstruction Project that is scheduled to be completed this year, the Street Department will be making repairs to failed sections of Milam Street in advance of the project. The use of an asphalt milling machine would greatly expedite the City's repair process which would result in a reduction in construction time thus reducing the overall inconvenience to traffic and adjacent business and residential areas. City of San Angelo owns an asphalt milling machine (asphalt zipper) and has agreed verbally to let the City of Fredericksburg borrow this piece of equipment.

Fredericksburg put approximately 80 hours on the City's asphalt zipper saving over $100,000 on a street repair project.  That means San Angelo used the equipment a mere 22 hours since 2005 or an average 1.3 hours each year.

Decades of deferred maintenance, failure of Benedetti machine and negligible use of its asphalt milling machine occurred under the leadership of Public Works Chiefs Ricky Dickson and Shane Kelton. 

An engineer with knowledge of city operations said recently:

"There will be no marked change to the overall condition of the streets in San Angelo in our lifetime….guaranteed!" 

City Council may give "the boys with the big toys" a new job.  That may require street maintenance to use its asphalt zipper more than 1.3 hours per year.