Quality of Cedar Rapids streets 'not what we want,' official says

A casual drive through Cedar Rapids just might turn your stomach, or ruin your car's shocks.

Many roads are bumpy, broken and cracked, and the city admits it's not repairing and maintaining the roads like it did in the past.

“Our overall roads are in fair to good condition. Our arterial roads and our residential roads are in poor to fair condition,” said Craig Hanson, the city's public works maintenance manager.

In the past decade, the city has grown by about 10 square miles. With more area to maintain and less money to cover the cost, streets have suffered.

“Kids can't ride their bikes on this street. Chunks of concrete come up,” Bever Avenue resident Theresa Ostrander said. “They keep patching it and patching it, and it keeps recurring.”

The avenue in southeast Cedar Rapids, she said, “used to be a nice, smooth street. Now it's just a mass of tar and bumps.”

Lifetime resident Amanda Pauly has watched her street - Ashford Drive NE - deteriorate over the years.

“It's definitely gotten a lot worse,” Pauly said.

Hanson said crews haven't been able to repair the street, because the city cut about 30 jobs in the past decade.

“Our quality of roads and our level of service are not what we want them to be,” Hanson said.

Repair work also takes longer than in the past, but the city wants to avoid paying overtime.

“You see them out there working on it,” Pauly said. “It could take a week for one part of the road. Then the other half of the road will take them three weeks.”

State road-use taxes to Cedar Rapids

State road-use taxes to Cedar Rapids

2005: $10,076,387

2006: $10,149,731

2007: $10,103,731

2008: $10,385,928

2009: $10,058,261

Source: Iowa Department of Transportation

Still, the city puts a higher priority on streets than other jobs.

Crews used to mow city properties and parks every four weeks. Now, they cut the grass every six weeks. Street sweepers clean streets three to four times a year, as opposed to five to seven in the past.

“I freely admit we have been choosing repair of our roads as a higher priority than some of the appearance or other choices for our community,” Hanson said.

Also, materials to pave and repair streets have become more expensive.

Asphalt, cement, concrete and steel have nearly doubled in price over the past 10 years.

It's a statewide problem; Iowa Department of Transportation director Nancy Richardson has said that state road construction costs jumped 15 percent last year alone.

Yet the fuel tax that funds about 40 percent of the “road-use tax” dedicated to road improvements and repairs has remained unchanged for two decades. That tax generated only about $40 million of the $1.1 billion that the state distributes in road-use tax each year.

Counties receive 32.5 percent and cities receive about 20 percent of that road-use tax. The remainder stays with the state.

In Cedar Rapids, that road-use tax money - $10 million last fiscal year - pays for streets maintenance staff and some road work. The city also issues bonds - $5.4 million this fiscal year - to pay for street work. The general obligation bonds are repaid by property taxes.

Hanson said the city needs additional funding to bring roads up to more acceptable standards.

“It comes down to choices we make and choices our elected officials make,” Hanson said.

However, the choice to delay maintenance costs more money, too.

“If you don't repair in the short-term, the cost of long-term maintenance will go up, because you're going to shorten their life and have to replace the road sooner,” Hanson said. “You don't get to roll up a street at night. It's still there. People are using it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

The streets department plans to ask the City Council to allow it to hire more people to meet the growing road repair and construction demands. Given current budget constraints, Hanson estimates it could take years to build staff levels back to where they were a decade ago.

-- Mark Geary, KCRG-TV9