Manteca is pursuing a “new” path when it comes to addressing pavement issues.

The city is taking street repairs into their own hands when they can.

The City Council — working with essentially an all-new city hall leadership team assembled over the past four years — has put in place an “in-house” street improvement strategy.

It won’t tackle larger pavement needs such as rebuilding road sections or annual massive overlay efforts to extend the life of streets such as a $2 million project authorized this week for the Del Webb at Woodbridge neighborhood.

But it does allow the city to chip away at some of the most egregious segments of pavement in Manteca.

It is work that goes beyond sealing cracks in roads and filling potholes that crews have been doing for years without making much headway.

And to make it happen, the City Council is tapping into $8.6 million in remaining one-time federal COVID relief funds to buy or replace needed equipment. They have also paid for training to make sure key street division personnel are trained in the latest pavement repair techniques.

And they are including funding in the budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that will expand the streets maintenance division crew by two workers.

The first high-profile project is now underway. It is an asphalt overlay on Spreckels Avenue between Moffat Boulevard and the northern edge of the Spreckels Park BMX facility.

The 22-year-old street about a decade ago started getting heavier use when Industrial Park Drive was extended to connect with it.

That increased the amount of truck traffic significantly. That is blamed, to a degree, for the emergence of potholes, the washboard effect, broken asphalt segments and cracks.

The heavy rains this past winter also did not help.

City crews over the years have done patchwork on potholes when weather warms. But given a more permanent repair requires removing pavement  and applying asphalt, the pothole fixes have been fleeting.

Also at the top of the city’s list is Center Street from Union Road to the western edge of Morenzone Park.

City crews also will replace the most egregious segments of street pavement in the Shasta Park neighborhood in the coming weeks.

Mayor Gary Singh said the somewhat piecemeal approach is designed to stretch the $2.5 million the city secures annually from gas tax and the countywide half cent Measure K transportation tax.

It if only half of the $5 million pavement experts have told Manteca it needs to spend annually on existing streets over the next decade to prevent identified streets from deteriorating completely. That’s a $50 million tab.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com

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