Monett Street Maintenance Plan
With summer rapidly approaching, the Monett Streets Department is gearing up for a busy summer schedule of road maintenance.
In addition to ongoing repairs for regular road damage like potholes, the city maintains a preventative maintenance schedule on all city streets to prolong the life of roadways and reduce the amount of major rehabilitation projects.
The city does recognize that there are several city roads in dire need of extensive work. A schedule is being developed to address those projects, with the first two, the Central Avenue Rehabilitation Project and the Chappell Drive Overpass Project, currently underway.
While road crews and contractors prepare for those major projects, the city is also increasing its regular preventative maintenance program this summer.
Last year, Monett Public Works was forced to reduce its regular preventative maintenance program due to a major malfunction in its chip and seal equipment that required crews to focus on flat surfaces and avoid any roads will hills or banks.
Public Works Director Dave Dunn said city mechanics and road crews attempted to repair the chip spreader, but replacement parts for the mid-1980s model piece of equipment could not be found.
Chip and seal is a preventative maintenance treatment that protects the road’s surface by applying a liquid asphalt emulsion that is then covered with a fine aggregate. Rollers embed the crushed aggregate into the emulsion, and sweepers follow to remove the remaining aggregate, leaving an overlay on the roadway.
The chip and seal acts as a waterproofing membrane, shielding the road’s surface from potentially damaging effects of sun and water, and combats oxidation that causes asphalt to become brittle and more susceptible to fractures and cracks. Chip and seal can prolong the life of a road by five to seven years.
While chip and seal operations were reduced in 2023, street crews continued other maintenance operations, including repairing potholes and sealing cracks and joints to prevent water from infiltrating the pavement structure.
The city authorized the purchase of a new, modern chip sealer in 2023. Dunn said the new equipment will provide several efficiencies that will reduce the amount of time it takes to complete sealing on specific roadways and will provide cost savings by providing a more accurate distribution of gravel during sealing operations.
With the new chip sealer now in full operation for the summer of 2024, the city Road Department has scheduled maintenance on two major sections of town: the roads in South Park, and a neighborhood between N. Central Avenue and 9th Street north of Cleveland that has been designated as the Plumb Group of city streets.
City street crews have started work on crack sealing, repairing low spots and patching damage caused by utility work in preparation for the road work.
Chip and seal maintenance must be completed during the warm summer months to ensure the liquid asphalt emulsion that is used can bind to the gravel.
Traditionally, the city begins its preventative maintenance work immediately following the Independence Day holiday on July 4. This year, to ensure the city stays on schedule with its increased summer workload, crews have already started crack sealing, repairing utility cuts and managing vegetation on the roads slated for chip sealing. Crews are scheduled to begin chip sealing work no later than July 1.
Dunn said the city has created a comprehensive five-year plan that aims to see preventative maintenance on each city street completed every five years. This program is designed to ensure the longevity of new roadways, while preserving aging roads and allowing street crews to continue maintenance while maneuvering around large projects (like Spire’s system upgrade, or the city’s Lead-Free Monett initiative) that may result in disturbances to pavement. In short, the city has a plan to avoid doing maintenance or repairs in areas that will later be damaged by planned utility projects, while ensuring there is a regular schedule for preventative maintenance throughout the city.
In addition to the regular preventative maintenance plan, the city has scheduled an extensive rehabilitation plan for city roads.
The preventative maintenance plan aims to ensure that the necessary regular work to preserve city streets continues and prolongs the lifespan of streets. Resurfacing work, a more extensive reconstruction of damaged roadways is scheduled to begin following the completion of the extensive Central Avenue Improvement project and Chappell Drive Overpass project. That resurfacing plan aims to see most city roads receiving more extensive work that would include new pavement over a seven-year period, with work scheduled to be completed in the same blocks of roadways identified in the preventative maintenance plan.
To view the city’s Preventative Maintenance Plan, visit Preventative Pavement Maintenance Plan - 2023.pdf (revize.com)
