MOUNT VERNON — The administration is busy compiling a list of streets for resurfacing this summer.
On Monday, Mount Vernon City Council passed legislation to allow the city to move ahead with street resurfacing by advertising for bids for asphalt and resurfacing services.
Mount Vernon Safety-Service Director Dave Glass said the city will spend about $400,000 to repave streets; the streets in the worst condition, especially those riddled with potholes, will be given the highest priority.
“We’re finishing up a list of which streets need to be paved,” he said. “We’ll see how far the money we have for resurfacing will go.”
Glass said sections of West Gambier Street, Norton Street, West Vine Street, Teryl Drive and Chester Street are already on the list. He said the street department surveys the city streets and uses a system to rate their condition.
“It’s always easy to pick out the bad ones,” he said. “The difficulty comes in deciding on the ones in the middle.”
Although it will be a number of months before streets are resurfaced, the street department should be out next week patching potholes. For a number of weeks, the department has been using a patching material called cold mix, which only provides a temporary fix and is only useful for filling deep potholes. Glass said hot mix material, which makes for a more long-term fix and can be used for more shallow potholes, should be available next week.
In other city news:
•Two city employees are retiring this weekend after 30 years. Bill Wells was the foreman of the Water and Wastewater Distribution crew; Ed Smith was a maintenance worker with the same with the distribution crew.
•The administration has consultants working on a multimillion dollar project at the city wastewater plant, which includes extensive electrical upgrades and a new generator to run the plant. Mount Vernon City Council will discuss the project in late April. It should get under way in about a year from now.
•Grant applications are available in the mayor’s office for pool memberships for low-income families. Glass said the problem that arises is that there are more applications received than money available.