Charlotte City Council
Transportation Committee
Meeting Summary for April 23, 2007
Agenda Topics:
I.
Street Degradation Fees
Committee Information:
Present: Pat Mumford (Chair), Michael Barnes, Nancy Carter, Warren Turner
Discussion Summary:
Chairman called the meeting to order at 3:11 PM. He introduced Danny Pleasant to talk about
the Street/Pavement Degradation item.
Danny Pleasant from CDOT gave a PPT presentation (attached with agenda) that gave a history
of the issue, the results of a study conducted on degradation because of utility cuts, and his
department’s request for action. He began by giving an update on some of CDOT’s road
projects.
Mr. Pleasant told the Committee that the additional money they approved for street resurfacing
in the FY2007 budget has brought down the resurfacing schedule from about 30 years to about
16 years. He also talked about new street construction standards, signed off on by the City
Engineer, which will require thicker pavement in subdivision streets and will increase the
longevity of those roads, which under the old standard were lasting only about five years.
As Mr. Pleasant spoke about new street construction standards, Chairman asked how long the
roads built with the new standards will last. Mr. Pleasant said about 12 years, and that’ll bring us
in line with some of our peer cities.
Council Member Carter reminded that there are restrictions for heavy vehicles on local streets,
and she asked if there is a way to clarify what they are or maybe narrow the definition. Mr.
Pleasant said that the restriction is on thru trucks and that the dilemma that CMPD has in
enforcing that is the difficulty in identifying whether a truck is making a local delivery (which is
allowed) or just passing through.
Mr. Pleasant said that utility cut damage, the topic of today’s discussion, is one of the four
factors contributing to declining pavement.
Utility companies who cut pavements are required to refill and compact their excavations. CDOT
will then come in to lift, pave and finish the process, charging a fee to the utility to do so. CDOT
sees about 3000-5000 cuts a year, so they’re quite busy, and the cumulative effect of all these
cuts is degrading pavement.
Mr. Pleasant indicated that usually the disturbed area radiates about five feet from the cut.
Chairman asked if that were the case no matter how big the cut. Mr. Pleasant said yes. Council
Member Carter asked if those five feet were from the center. Dr. Ogunro from UNCC, who
conducted the study determining truly how much degradation occurs, was on hand and said it is
five feet from the edge of the cut.
Mr. Pleasant said that the study also included an evaluation of a possible fee structure. Given the
five foot avg. deterioration, the correct thickness of pavement cover that would strengthen the
area is about 1.66 inches. Before Mr. Pleasant continued, Chairman asked if you’d be disturbing
the base dirt in the five foot area. Mr. Pleasant said no, you’d only mill the top pavement down
enough to then cover it with 1.66 inches of pavement, and that amounts to an equivalent
restoration of strength. It costs about $1.33/sq. ft. to achieve that 1.66 inches per square foot. So
that would be the extra costs incurred.
Chairman then asked what the standard depth of asphalt for State roads. Mr. Pleasant said he
wasn’t quite sure, but he thinks its two inches.
Mr. Pleasant, with Dr. Ogunro’s help, explained a graphic in the presentation illustrating the
additional area around the cut that would be resurfaced under this scheme. He said it would be
anywhere from $200-$600 additional cost to resurface the entire area in this way.
Mr. Pleasant asked the Committee to allow CDOT to recover this extra cost in their billing
process. He explained that the incremental revenue collected from the increased fee would go
into an account to supplement the existing street resurfacing and street maintenance costs.
Council Member Barnes asked for clarification on the fee amount and then asked “where’s the
extra money [for the supplemental account] coming from?” Danny Pleasant explained that they
wouldn’t actually do the work to buttress the additional five-foot degradation area but instead
charge for that area and put the additional money in the account to supplement future repaving.
Council Member Carter asked why weren’t we going ahead and fixing the five-foot degradation
area. Mr. Pleasant said it’s time and effort. One of the things they strive for is to get the work
done as soon as possible, so it made more sense to them to structure this in a way that’ll allow
them to build better streets in the future than to spend more time on streets now. Council
Member Carter said she’s not quite convinced, particularly since it seems to preserve the street
for a longer time.
Curt Walton asked Council Member Carter to think about a situation in which a utility cut is
made on a really bad street, the whole street is going to be resurfaced whenever its rating
warrants it. Rather than put that portion of this fee to fix that patch and then resurface the whole
thing, this is waiting ‘til the entire resurfacing is done and getting it all at once. Council Member
Carter said she’d subscribe to that, but what if you’re coming onto a newly paved street that’s not
to be resurfaced for a while, wouldn’t you repair the entire area in question. Mr. Pleasant asked
Dr. Ogunro to answer. He reiterated that the time is an obstacle, up to two days for one small
area. Mr. Pleasant said that it’s hard for our equipment to mill small areas.
Chairman said it seems odd to say “we know there’s going to be a problem outside the
immediate cut and meanwhile escrow the money ‘til the road’s going to be repaved 12 years
later” but that he assumes there’ll be a list of where the cuts occur and that the presence of cuts
will come into play as a variable when they’re considering which roads to resurface. Mr.
Pleasant said they are not changing their evaluation formula or method, but that if the roads
deteriorate enough they’ll show up on the normal evaluation and be resurfaced.
According to Chairman, the challenge to elected officials is to explain to the neighbors why the
cut was repaired but not repaired to the standard we’ve identified, but yet we’ve charged
someone for the higher standard. Because this system “waits for failure” there might be a
different solution for “good roads, bad roads, and intermediate roads” because as the proposal
stands, we’ve identified a problem but refuse to implement the solution. Dr. Ogunro said he
didn’t include mobilization fee into the equation, so that would change the cost.
Chairman said we need to communicate better what we’re actually doing. “We’re not actually
going to fix the cut, we’re creating an account to address the macro issue.”
Council Member Carter asked if we assess these costs on State roads. Danny Pleasant said no,
and that we don’t do the repairs on that road. She suggested that we share this with the State
because uniformity is preferred.
Council Member Turner asked “we don’t do repair work on State roads, but we’ll do cuts on
State roads?” Mr. Pleasant said only in emergencies do we make cuts on State roads, and we’re
eventually reimbursed by them. Council Member Turner said that when they make cuts, CMUD
should do it well to set an example for others. And “would we assess ourselves and charge
ourselves the fee, or do we retrain our people to repair the cuts better?” If we give this to the
State, we may “become a victim to our own improvement” Mr. Pleasant said that, yes, CMUD
will be the biggest contributor of the fee, and that if the State picked it up we’d be subject to it
from their end as well.
Council Member Turner continued by saying that he thinks this is the direction we need to go
because there are many, many utilities that are cutting the road and degrading the pavement. He
asked how much Time Warner contributes to street degradation. Phil Reager, CDOT’s Business
Manager, said that most of what Time Warner does is aerial, but that Bell South is increasingly
doing underground stuff.
Council Member Turner referred to new neighborhoods, for which the City has just taken over
responsibly for the roads, with streets in very poor condition. He asked if we’re “short on staff”
and not able to go and inspect those roads. Mr. Pleasant said he can’t really speak to the staffing
levels of the group that does that, but that we’re growing so fast they’re certainly stretched thin.
Council Member Turner asked if it were legal to hold the developers responsible for a longer
period of time after the City has taken over the road. Mr. Pleasant said the City does not require
the developer to warranty the streets, but that the City does inspect to make sure they’re built
correctly. Council Member Turner said if there are truly more streets that we can inspect,
somebody is getting away with something. Curt Walton said the problem is neighborhoods we
annex that weren’t part of the ETJ; those developers are long gone and weren’t subject to our
standards even when they were around. The City has two years to bring those neighborhoods up
to City standards and street conditions are one of the two biggest expenses for annexation.
Chairman asked if CDOT needs the Committee to make a recommendation to Council. Mr.
Pleasant said yes and reminded the Committee that CDOT would be able to determine the
effected area and charge/collect the additional fee with their current staff.
Chairman asked Phil Reager if the lack of representation from the private sector meant that
they’re pretty much okay with this. Phil Reager said that his utility stakeholder committee was
given a presentation on this, and most understand they have an affect on the condition of the
pavement and that this is one way to capture the cost of that impact.
Curt Walton said that the budget CMUD showed them last week at the Budget Retreat assumed
that this new fee was in place.
Council Member Carter said she supported the idea and recommended that it be passed on to
Council. She asked if there will be any unintended consequences, like utilities that usually go
underground switching to aerial. Mr. Pleasant said that subdivision ordinances require most new
developments to place things underground. He doesn’t think that any of the aerial utilities are
considering going underground anyway, so this won’t deter them.
Council Member Carter made a motion to recommend the fee to the Council, but asked that
Council Member Turner’s concern about folks in the ETJ following our standards also be
forwarded to the Council.
Chairman said it is important, if this is passed, to come back and give regular reports to Council
on its progress: how much money we’re making, the needs that we’re seeing, whether we need to
“recalibrate”
Council Member Carter asked if the cuts will enter into our prioritization of street resurfacing.
Mr. Pleasant said that every two years when they do the pavement evaluation, typically the ones
that move up on the prioritization are the ones that often get cut.
Council Member Barnes seconded the motion. Motion passed unanimously.
Chairman said that there’s a strange leak coming out of East Blvd. between Starbucks and Brixx
Pizza. He notices it in the morning but can’t find a cut or anything in the street where it would
logically come from, he guesses the ground is just “crying”. Council Member Turner also said
there’s a leak at South Tryon and Ayersley, right before you get to PetroExpress at I485. Council
Member Barnes said that Harris Blvd. is “crying” between I85 and IBM drive. David McDonald
said that that’s coming from the sprinkler system in the middle of the road installed by IBM.
Curt Walton asked Norm Steinmann to update the Committee on a couple of items.
Norm Steinmann said that a public hearing is coming up this week held by NC Division of Air
Quality on the “State Implementation Plan”, produced by NCDENR. A couple of the
assumptions in that plan are that technology will create cleaner engines in vehicles that’ll cut
down emissions, and that new laws will limit dangerous emissions from smokestacks, but other
than that there will be few changes.
CDOT’s concern comes in another area. The standard practice is to have “emissions budgets” for
areas. In the SIP, DAQ used Counties. We believe that NCDAQ has made a mistake in their
determination of how many tons of pollutants come out of each County. The mistake isn’t for us
here in Mecklenburg, but for as many as three nearby Counties. We cannot show that, in the
future, the emissions coming out of motor vehicles will be less than those budget numbers
they’ve assigned. And if we can’t do that we have a conformity problem which, as you know,
will stop federal funding for transit and highway projects until we come into compliance. You
haven’t received any information at the Council level yet, because up until now we saw it as a
very technical and esoteric issue. But now that we’re getting to the public review period, it’s time
to bring it to your attention. A few staff from CDOT have gone to Raleigh to try and convince
them not to go with county-by-county budgets. That and other things in the SIP will make it very
difficult for us to demonstrate conformity.
Chairman asked if it was true that “there’s not anything we can do about this as a City.” Mr.
Steinmann said that that’s correct; it’s MUMPO’s responsibility under law to ensure conformity.
Mr. Steinmann said also that this really doesn’t have anything to do with clean air itself since
conformity is achieved through proper modeling and estimates.
Chairman said that the estimates are based on assumptions that a certain number of roads will be
built and repaired and that right now we’re not seeing a lot of money to complete those projects
with.
Council Member Carter asked how often they “reconfigured the modeling” Mr. Steinmann said
about once a decade.
Council Member Carter said we could get some support from the NCLM if we can find some
other areas where this inaccuracy is occurring. She’s asked if we’re communicating with other
urban areas. Mr. Steinmann said we’re the only ones who have this much at stake and that there
really isn’t much time to try and mobilize a big effort. He said that he thinks the best hope is to
present this as a purely technical issue.
Chairman said this is a classic example of other areas not being concerned by this because they
don’t receive as much federal funding as we do. They see it as “we should repair it today but
we’ll put it off because its negative impacts won’t come until much later” because they’re not
feeling the pain today.
Council Member Carter said she’s trying to push this into “at least a Metropolitan Coalition
issue; we need someone other than us speaking about this.”
Mr. Steinmann reiterated that it may be too late for politics; the SIP must be done by the middle
of June 15th.
Chairman asked Curt Walton to prepare an overview about what the deadlines for this issue are,
when we’d feel the impacts, etc. He wants an explanation of the issue to give it context.
Council Member Turner asked how much of our air quality problems are geographical. Mr.
Pleasant said very little, but maybe the coal plants nearby contribute a bit. Mostly it’s the amount
of people and driving that take place here. Mr. Steinmann said that only about 70% of vehicle
miles traveled are made by Mecklenburg County residents within the County; 30% are made by
people traveling through. That’s one of the reasons CDOT believes the SIP shouldn’t use countyby-county budgets.
Council Member Turner asked if there was any other city with the same number of major
highways we have.
Chairman adjourned the meeting.