Back-to-back blizzards this past winter will cost Denver about $20 million in street repairs over the next four years, officials said Wednesday.
Public Works manager Bill Vidal said the city’s streets aged one to two years on average during the storms and the prolonged cold spells that accompanied them. The damage has forced Public Works to ask the City Council for an increase of $5 million over the $12.4 million street maintenance budget this year.
“We all have events in our lives that age us more,” Vidal told the Public Works Committee. “These pavements have been aging. What (the winter) did is it accelerated that aging.”
In all, the past winter tacked a projected $16.4 million worth of needed improvements on top of the regular maintenance budget.
The city spent $5 million in contingency funds this year to help cover $13 million in snow and ice removal costs.
Vidal said the Public Works Department plans to budget an additional $5 million annually for four years to pay for the road work and the anticipated inflation.
While it is expensive, Vidal said, spending the money now will save the city from spending tens of millions of dollars down the road if streets continue to deteriorate.
Compounding the issue of Denver’s roads is that the capital improvement budget is already slated to drop lower than that of the lean times of 2003.
“We’re really going in the wrong direction,” said Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz, who is not on the committee. She skipped an event with Mayor John Hickenlooper in her district to attend Wednesday’s meeting.
“I’m down here dealing with this issue because the roads are in bad shape.”
The suburbs, with newer pavement and fewer miles of roads, had it better this winter.
“We haven’t gone over that budget, and we don’t intend to,” said city of Boulder spokesman Andrew Barth.
“We had nothing like Denver’s potholes,” said Don Martz, transportation manager for the town of Castle Rock.
Most of Castle Rock’s potholes – a few hundred along 422 lane miles of city streets – are but a memory.
“They tackled them pretty quickly,” town spokeswoman J.J. McCormack said of public works crews.
Littleton has filled in most of its potholes as well, but “it’s a never-ending task,” said Charlie Blosten, public services director. As in most smaller towns, pothole work came out of the regular road budget, Blosten said of his $2 million allocation for up to 500 lane miles.
The winter storms dealt $75,000 to $100,000 in damage to Douglas County roads, a little more than the entire annual budget for potholes, said road and bridge manager Randy Teague.
But for Denver, the past winter continues to wallop city funds.
City Council members plan to meet next week to assess how the road and snow-removal costs are affecting the 2007 budget.
Budget manger Mel Thompson told council members Wednesday that the city will be able to pay for the street maintenance supplemental by cutting costs in other areas and with income that was not in the budget.
But he said the mayor’s office is examining the budget.
“There are a number of items in the budget that are running over,” Thompson said.
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 303-954-1657 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
COST VARIES BY LOCALE
$20 million
The planned additional budget over the next four years to fix Denver roads hit by blizzards
$2 million
Littleton’s normal road budget; the funds to repair potholes must come out of it
$75,000 to $100,000
Douglas County’s road-damage tab from the storms, a little above its annual pothole budget
