The city is budgeting $4.6 million for road projects in 2020 and planning to repave around 20 lane miles next year. Six of those lane miles will be in the Yankee Trace neighborhood, includes Gatekeepers and Waters Edge.
Pellwood and John Elwood are scheduled to be repaved in 2020 and the city will likely do approximately 10 lane miles of concrete work, which means those roads will be repaved in 2021 according to City Engineer, Jim Brinegar.
“The concrete repair program that precedes the repaving projects includes repairs of curbs, catch basins, storm sewers and sidewalks. Homeowners are not billed individually if the City finds curbs or sidewalks that need repairs,” he said. “That is called ‘assessing’ and it is a common practice in many neighboring communities. For example, if your curb is found to be deteriorated or defective prior to a resurfacing program in Centerville, it is replaced at no charge to the homeowner.”
He added that many of these projects include partnership with Montgomery County Environmental Services doing water and sanitary replacements ahead of repaving projects. A couple of joint projects with Washington Township are also planned.
Centerville’s five-year Strategic Plan identifies infrastructure as a major goal, including managing assets to ensure plans are financially sustainable through their useful life and that they contribute to the desirability of the community.
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Voters embraced this and approved a 0.5 percent increase to the city’s income tax. In 2016, city leaders vowed a large portion of the funds generated would be used for street maintenance and repair.
Every two years, officials rate every street in Centerville. The condition of the streets are ranked from best to worst to give a baseline, which doesn’t guarantee an order of repair, but gives the city an objective starting place for decision-making.
“We have 250 lane miles in Centerville. We are fortunate city council has put such a big emphasis on maintaining those streets and sidewalks. Before the income tax increase, many of our streets were far beyond industry standard for pavement life, which is 20 years for residential streets and 15 years for main roads,” said Public Works Director, Doug Spitler. “We saw the gap widening and we weren’t catching up. That is why council made this investment. In 2019 alone, we will have resurfaced nearly 10-percent of the lane miles in the city.”
Centerville just finished upgrading or reconstructing 13 traffic signals at intersections on Wilmington Pike in partnership with Greene County and the Ohio Department of Transportation followed by a $1.3 million resurfacing project.
The city received funding through the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission and the state’s Surface Transportation Program that helped to make the project possible.
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