Cape grants contract to crack team

The job of fixing very real road cracks was falling through the organizational cracks in Cape Girardeau.

Last year, for the first time, the city hired an outside contractor to perform routine preventative maintenance on many of the city's streets.

Kluesner Concrete from Scott City, Mo., recently finished the street repair work, which was basically to fill in cracks and replace street joints. The contract was for $55,000.

The repair work consisted of routing, cleaning and applying and asphalt-based sealant in approximately 10,000 linear feet of existing pavement joints and cracks.

Tim Gramling, assistant public works director, said the city's crews were too busy with other jobs to keep up with the crack repairs.

"Our guys have a lot of other responsibilities like grading gravel alleys, trimming trees, patching potholes," he said. "That combined with the fact that our equipment is older and less reliable. Basically, we had a lot of years where we weren't getting these preventative maintenance things done and we were getting behind."

The city's maintenance crews are also in charge of cleaning streets of leaves, snow and ice, Gramling said.

Gramling also added that the city's growth affects the amount of work that the street maintenance crew has to do.

"As the city grows, there are more miles of streets to take care of," he said. "You get more traffic on streets and more use on them so that goes to the degradation of the streets."

Gramling said hiring outside help to replace the cracks is something the city plans to do for the next three or four years.

Twelve areas were recently repaired around the city.

They include:

Broadview from Independence to south of Maria Louise

Broadview from William to Independence

Hopper Road from Kingshighway west to new concrete near Clippard School

Mount Auburn from Bloomfield to William

Mount Auburn from Wisteria to Dogwood

Saint Francis Drive from Gordonville to William

Silver Springs from Independence south to new concrete

Silver Springs from William south past the Goodwill store

Spring Avenue from Bessie to end of concrete

Themis from Clark to Kingshighway

Themis from Silver Springs to Marrossean Drive

Stonebridge Drive from Bloomfield to Stonebridge Drive