Jefferson City is preparing for another season of street overlay work.
At the Public Works and Planning Committee meeting Thursday, Operations Division Director Britt Smith presented a three-year list of streets scheduled to receive an overlay, though he noted the list was a working plan and could change depending on the bids the city receives.
The city's half-cent capital improvements sales tax provides $1.2 million each year for street resurfacing. The 2016 list, as Smith presented Thursday, contains portions of 22 streets to receive an overlay for an estimated cost of roughly $979,000. The remaining street resurfacing funds would be spent on inspections and a new process city staff are hoping will help extend the life of previous overlay work called fog seal.
Smith said fog sealing is very similar to a previously used chip-and-seal process, which involves spreading oil over the surface of a road to seal any cracks within the street, extending its use, and covering it with a thin layer of rock to serve as an additional wearing surface as well as to prevent oil from going on vehicles that drive down the road. With fog sealing, Smith said it's a blend of oil and sand, which is finer than the rock used in chip and seal, and is slightly cheaper than the chip-and-seal process, something he noted is not commonly done in urban areas.
Smith said Boone County has used fog sealing on its roads in the years after overlay and chip-and-seal projects to extend the life of the roads.
"We don't think we want to go that route," he said of using both fog seal and chip-and-seal on streets. "Chip-and-seal is not nearly as accepted in an urban area as it is maybe in a rural area, but by doing a fog seal over the top of those pavements, we hope we can keep those pavements from graying out, getting hard. ... It helps seal in that pavement."
Smith said $200,000 for the fog seal process would cover almost every street overlayed three years ago.
The committee voted unanimously to support the staff recommended list of streets to be overlayed in 2016.