Sitka has torn up what is likely the first of many paved city streets and returned it to gravel.
The community has wrestled for years with how to pay to replace pavement put down during the heyday of the state’s oil wealth in the 1980s. And so far, no one’s come up with a plan for local funding that’s acceptable to residents.
Even if all of Sitka’s streets go back to gravel, says public works director Michael Harmon, it will cost more than Sitka currently spends on roads to maintain them. (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)
The public works department spent about a day removing the pavement from a quarter-mile stretch of Anna Drive shortly before Christmas.
The move took residents by surprise, especially this one.
“We have initiated a program which we have affectionately dubbed the Back to the Future Roads Program,” said Mark Gorman, Sitka’s municipal administrator, at a recent assembly meeting.
“I so happen to be a resident on Anna Drive. The road has been turned from very bad asphalt to gravel, because we don’t have the resources. And it’s actually improved the safety of that drive.”
Gorman says he didn’t realize his street was going to be taken up until work actually started. But things were pretty bad: Cars would typically move far out of the correct lane to avoid the deep ruts in the pavement, which created a hazard on the hairpin turn.
Now it’s smooth gravel.
“It was potholed so bad we could not put in the patch and have it last very long,” according to Michael Harmon, Sitka’s director of public works. Although his department might have give a little better notice, he says Anna Drive was a no-brainer.
“It was really halfway to gravel. And so to make it safe, and easy to travel, it was ready to transition. We had to do something.”
And there are other streets on the list, Harmon says. When I ask him for specifics, he says Valhalla and Viking Way jump to the top, along with sections of Monastery Street.
But he also shrugs and says, It’s a big list.
“There’s hardly a road in our inventory that’s in even good enough shape to overlay, and in my mind that’s very bad.”
Sitka has 24 miles of paved residential streets, and Harmon says they’re all aging past the point of repair. Just to replace the most heavily-used streets — the ones with curbs, sidewalks, and gutters, like Lincoln and Lake streets — will cost $28-million dollars. Sitka’s annual roads budget? Around $1-million this year.
Harmon says saving Sitka’s most-used streets is his priority, but he’s still trying to stretch pavement money farther than physically possible.
“So even at $1-million, that’s 28 years just to get our curb, gutter, sidewalk streets. A road doesn’t even last that long. And lane-mile wise, that’s missing 60-70 percent of our infrastructure.”
And if that’s the rock, here’s the hard place: Even in gravel, streets like Anna Drive are still expensive to maintain. According to Harmon, a complete reversion would not break even under the current budget.
“If we went to all-gravel, I think we’re facing a little over $1-million a year just to maintain that, which is — again — more than we’re putting into roads now.”
The reversion to gravel does have an upside. Harmon says that taking up old pavement is also the first step toward putting down new — and it can be months or years, if a neighborhood decides to pull together and pave its street. So far that hasn’t happened. The Gavan Hill subdivision, which has never had pavement, recently rejected forming an LID — or Local Improvement District — for paving. Other funding alternatives, like a vehicle tax, have also met firm resistance from the public.
Harmon is a lifelong Sitka resident, however, and he remembers when gravel was the norm.
“You can taste it in your teeth when you’re riding a bike on a road like that, or walking on it. It finds its way into your house. I’ve talked to people who remember the days when it was gravel roads, and they talk about how their clothes were dusty, and the whole inside of their house was totally different. So I know it would be a vast departure from the lifestyle that we know today.”
A vast departure, at least until Sitkans pull on to one of the community’s three state-funded highways. Sawmill Creek Road, Halibut Point Road, the roundabout, and Harbor Drive have all been replaced over the last few years, as have several downtown streets which required sewer and water upgrades. The tab for all that work topped $70-million.
And Edgecumbe Drive is scheduled to be replaced next summer at mostly state expense. The cost will be $5-million.
