By Doug Miller
In tabling the measure, perhaps for good, city officials said the plan essentially would go into effect as a guide for future road rehabilitation, rather than as law. It had already been tabled once before, at the Jan. 3 meeting.
"It's too fluid a document" to become legislation, council President Leonard Remo said Tuesday night. "And the people who wrote it agree it shouldn't be voted on."
He promised that the document, which is available in PDF format on the city's Web site, longbeachny.org, would be referred to as if it were law, and that the public was encouraged to examine it.
But Councilman Tom Sofield said the information contained in the document was too valuable to just be put away in a drawer. "This holds us accountable to fix these roads," he said. "This council and future administrations. It's no secret that in the past there was suspicion that roads in this city were cared for based not on need but on who lived on those streets, or whose relatives lived there."
The plan, written by City Engineer Robert Raab and his staff, isolates the streets most in need of attention, offers recommendations for the most cost-efficient rehabilitation of those streets and establishes a set of criteria for future evaluations of the city's 50-plus miles of roadways.
Because the city, at age 84, is still in its relative infancy, the history of street maintenance is easily documented. Unfortunately, there's not much to tell. According to Raab's report, after the initial concrete roads were laid out beyond the cobblestone streets in the 1920s, they were left untouched for some 50 years, and then only touched up with "sporadic asphalt overlays ...
"There is no historic evidence that any comprehensive roadway and utility rehabilitation program and/or upgrading strategy was ever adopted or implemented," the report continued.
If you thought you lived on the city's worst street, but you don't live on Riverside Boulevard between East Park Avenue and Broadway, then you are wrong. That stretch of road scored lowest in Long Beach, based on an average rating of its water systems, drainage, pavement, sidewalks and driveway aprons and usage. It, along with 42 other stretches of road, were given an "A" rating by Raab, meaning it is a top priority for a complete rebuilding, including an upgrading of the sewer and potable water systems, where appropriate, replacement of concrete sidewalks, curbs and driveway aprons, installation of a concrete gutter and appropriate positive drainage facilities and replacement of the pavement.
A "B" rating, assigned to nine stretches of road, calls for merely another asphalt overlay and other work.
The cost differential between the two types of projects is substantial, Raab told the council on Jan. 3: $40,000 to $50,000 for a class B rehab versus $600,000 for a class A. And, he stressed, the longer the city waits, the more streets will slip from class B to class A.
"This was one of the things we promised in 2004, and he's been working on it for a year and a half," said Councilman James Hennessy. "This is what everyone complains about: dog poop and roads."
Among the other poorest-rated streets are the stretches of West Walnut, Hudson and Chester streets between Grand and Lindell boulevards; the entirety of Connecticut Avenue as well as the northernmost stretches of Georgia and Illinois avenues and California Street in the West End; and Harmon and Curley streets in the Canals.
The acceptance of Raab's report by the council in no way provides a timetable for the streets' rehab, since there is no funding for these projects in the 2005-06 budget. According to city officials, once the city's bond rating has been stabilized, which is supposedly imminent, a timetable for these projects can be established.
But the Curly Street situation is apparently so bad that the council approved $53,593 to move ahead with an engineering study for that street's rehab, and another half-million dollars for its rebuilding. A. James de Bruin & Sons in Bethpage was determined to be the lowest responsible bidder, and AII Allen Industries of Amityville got the reconstruction bid.
Curly Street was chosen, City Manager John Laffey said, because it had been the subject of a previous bid application that was due to expire, and the price was locked in before oil prices surged.
