NEW POLICY OFFICIALLY ALLOWS ASPHALT STREETS IN JACKSON

JACKSON, Mo. -- Until this week, residents of Jackson officially had only two choices for street surfaces -- gravel or concrete.

On Tuesday, the Jackson Board of Aldermen approved a new Street Improvement Policy which allows residents of gravel streets to choose an asphalt overlay instead of having to pay the higher cost of a fully engineered concrete street with curbs and gutters.

"The mayor and Board of Aldermen wanted to open up additional options for property owners living on existing gravel, oiled or partially asphalted streets," said Rodney Bollinger, the city's planning and zoning official.

Mayor Paul Sander also wanted the city to adopt a consistent policy. "We have had a policy in place a number of years that seemed like we varied from more than we went by it," he said.

The previous policy did not provide an option for asphalt overlays but some were allowed anyway. A recent example is the asphalt overlay of Old Toll Road.

The new policy allows property owners to take the option of submitting a request for an asphalt overlay. The city will approve the overlay provided the property owners pay 100 percent of the overlay estimate in advance. The city doesn't care whether all the property owners participate in funding the street so long as the full amount is raised.

The property owners also must acknowledge in writing that they will not oppose the city putting in an engineered concrete street at some future date if the city engineer deems it necessary.

Bollinger said the city considers the asphalt overlay a temporary situation that provides temporary relief from the dust that accompanies gravel roads. Asphalting a street actually saves the city money because of the amount of grading gravel requires, he said.

Once the street is asphalted, the city will maintain it.

Under the policy, streets with asphalt overlays would not have curbs and gutters and would not be considered engineered.

The city also is considering a policy change which would allow developers of subdivisions to put in asphalt streets with concrete curbs and gutters, Bollinger said.

He said the life expectancy of asphalt overlays can vary greatly. "Woodland Drive and Ridge Road have been asphalted forever and are holding up beautifully. But there are overlays that were done recently and are not holding up. They are strictly temporary and the drainage isn't engineered."

A local street would require fewer layers of asphalt than a collector or arterial street and thus will cost less to build, Bollinger said. "Different designs are required for the city for each of those classifications."

The city doesn't have many gravel streets remaining. Officials said the new policy will be especially helpful to residents on low-traffic gravel streets like South Bast, which has only 10 houses on it.

"In the past, the only thing they could do is put it in concrete," Sander said. "Now, in certain situations it makes more sense to put in asphalt."