A smoother ride along Yosemite Avenue between Main Street and the railroad tracks in downtown is coming.
City crews will start grinding and removing existing asphalt on Thursday, July 25, from 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
That is expected to allow paving to take place starting at 4 a.m. on July 29-31.
It reflects Manteca’s efforts to try to do as much in-house road work as possible without having to scrape together funds to put such work out to bid.
Up until last year, the city was not in a position to do much in-house street repairs other than minor work.
That’s because they did not have a pavement grinder.
And the aging specialized equipment needed to stripe streets and such was constantly breaking down.
On top of that, Manteca went more than a decade with a streets crews significantly understaffed.
The streets maintenance crew — that takes care of everything from debris removal, minor issues, sidewalk replacement, cleaning storm drains and such — was devastated in budget cuts imposed in 2010 during the Great Recession.
The division — with 14 workers at the time — was slashed in half to balance the budget..
During the two previous budget cycles, Councilman Charlie Halford led the charge to try and squeeze out funding to add back two street workers.
And while the department is still understaffed for basic city needs, the current budget lacked available funds to hire more street workers.
The city was able to purchase a pavement grinder and other asphalt work related equipment along with replacing the thermoplastic marking device to stripe crosswalks, travel lanes and other reflective road markings from pass through federal COVID relief funds.
The city didn’t need the entire $11 million plus they received to cover sales tax loses due to mandated pandemic closures of businesses as well as costs incurred to deal with COVID-19.
They put part of what was left over toward needs at the wastewater treatment plant as well as making it possible for the street division to do more complicated street repairs without having to use outside contractors.
The additional manpower gave the department somewhat better capacity to tackle such projects in addition to its regular workload.
This year the city crews have been able to repair a segment of Spreckels Avenue. Last year, projects they tackled include another segment of Spreckels Avenue and parts of Center Street.
The funding for materials for the Yosemite Avenue work now taking place was earmarked by Councilman Dave Breitenbucher from $2.5 million of remaining COVID funds that council members decided how to spend on one time endeavors to improve the community.
Each council member was allotted $450,000 to earmark while Mayor Gary Singh was responsible for determining how to spend $700,000.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
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