Scottville may begin prioritizing street paving projects.

Scottville may begin prioritizing street paving projects.

#Scottville.

By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief.

SCOTTVILLE — The City Commission is being asked to approve a request from City Manager Amy Williams to hire West Shore Consulting of Muskegon to begin rating and monitoring the city’s streets.

“This information can then be used to set up a short and long term street maintenance and replacement program,” Hansen stated in a memo to the city commission, which meets today at 5:30 p.m. at city hall, 105 N. Main St.

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed our streets are starting to need work and we have been in a reactionary mode rather than in a preventative maintenance mode,” Hansen said. “Just recently we spent $14,000 to put in some very large patches on two streets and there are others that aren’t far behind for needing similar work.  The last time we really did any significant street work was back in the early 2000s when we did the citywide sewer project. Since then we’ve only patched as needed and I believe we did one course of chip seal.  Some streets were partially re-surfaced this year with the water project, but those were limited.”

In its proposal West Shore Consulting, which is owned by Dennis Dunlap of Ludington, would come in and inspect each street and enter data into a computer program creating files that the city could use to budget street work.  That work may be preventative maintenance such as crack sealing, seal coating or it may be overall replacement. 

The cost of the work is $4,900 and the cost would be shared between both local and major streets funds based on total distances. 

“I believe this would be a very worthwhile program to have and it is my recommendation to move forward with this on Monday night.”