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City discusses paving projects

OBSERVER Photo by Jo Ward Above is the map that Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury shared with city residents at the Common Council meeting.

As the warm weather is drawing to a close, questions abound regarding the paving of city streets. At this week’s Dunkirk’s Common Council meeting, Fourth Ward candidate hopeful Nancy Nichols asked about when the residents could expect to see paving actually be done. It was noted at a prior meeting that “the end of summer” was the proposed deadline, but summer ended a month ago.

Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury stated that what he meant when he said “the end of summer,” he was referencing the Seel Street project. Woodbury also said that the city is waiting on a paver that they ordered in hopes of finishing up any dire roads before the snow flies.

At the meeting, Woodbury shared a map of the city highlighting roads that have been done, which ones are next to be done and those with pending water line upgrades.

The legend reads that the roads, colored orange, have been done since Mayor Wilfred Rosas took office. The yellow lines are city and county roads that have been done. The purple indicates where water lines are set to be replaced and the dashed lines are those next on the list.

Those on the short list to be done next include: Gratiot Court, Cedar Street, Frazier Street, Bradford Avenue, Elm Street, Sisson Street, the 100 block of N. Beagle Street, the 100 block of N. Ocelot Street, East Cedar Street; East Pine Street, South Warsaw Street, the 700 block of Park Street, the 700 block of Deer Street, the 700 block of Grant Avenue, Ruggles Street between Main and W. Talcott streets, Courtney Street, Hoyt Street between Doughty and Courtney Street, Doughty Street, St. Hedwigs Avenue, Seel Acres, Fairview Avenue, Willow Road and Greco Lane.

Baatan Avenue and the 700 block of Washington Avenue will be completed with new water lines and paving, courtesy of a $600,000 grant the city recently received from the state.

“One of the things that we didn’t do until recently was chip seal,” Woodbury commented. “We bought a machine with other municipalities some years ago and we thought that Third Street was a good place to try it and we did that several years ago.”

According to Woodbury, Third Street has held up well through the winters since it’s been done and it only cost about 15% of what it would cost to do a mill-and-fill. He took the time to point out state roads Route 60 and Route 5 done in the city as part of a $2 million project and noted that Third Street, in his opinion has held up better with less cost applied to it.

“If you take a look at those pavements that aren’t all that old. They have cracks with alligatoring (filled in cracks),” Woodbury stated. “They used the latest metric asphalt and our fairly cheap Third Street looks better than the state highways that used the more expensive method.”

The city hopes to get a few of the above mentioned roads completed while weather is still decent; if not they will be carried over into spring of next year.

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