Paving company offers asphalt deal to Jackson

Farmington Road north of Route D was set for a barber-shop haircut.

What it will get instead is a complete surface makeover.

Thanks to a sweet deal offered by Delta Asphalt, the motorists who use the collector street every day will get a long-term solution to the pothole problem.

The street was set for what city leaders called a "Band-Aid" fix, a layer of asphalt blend geared more toward filling patches than overlaying streets.

But after a call to Delta Asphalt, the city found it could get 1.5 inches of the good stuff for the same price as the temporary-fix mix.

But the company didn't stop there. Delta Asphalt will also provide a road paver, the trucks for transport and a supervisor for the project.

"What it boils down to is the city needed some advice on how to make the road better and we offered a better solution," said Glen Graham, who drives the road every day but said that didn't factor into the deal.

"We do a lot of work for the city and this is kind of like a thank you."

Apex Paving, Delta's sister company, did the work for Jackson's overlay program this year, Graham said.

"What they were wanting to use is a specialty product, a higher-end patching material that's not really made to be asphalt," Graham said. "We just wanted to make sure they got the right application with the right product. This is the beginning of a good road for them."

The reason Jackson set out to use a more temporary solution is because the road has never been a true asphalt street in the past. The road was originally a county road and was annexed into the city.

Increased traffic

In the mid-1990s, the road was improved to some degree, said public works director Rodney Bollinger, and the city made the decision to maintain the street at that level. Since then, the subdivisions have popped up and the street is used more and more. Traffic has reduced the road to just a small upgrade from gravel.

"It's falling apart and we get a lot of complaints on it," Bollinger said.

The city was set to maintain the street at the 1996 level with the temporary mix until Delta Asphalt came up with an alternative.

However, the city staff sought special permission from the city council because usually property owners usually have to pay for major street upgrades.

Since the street was a collector street and since the improvement came at no extra cost to the city, the council approved a motion at Monday night's meeting.

The company offered the city the hot-mix asphalt at $30 per ton, $6 per ton cheaper than the temporary alternative. The new surface is expected to last 12 to 15 years without major improvements. The other material would've lasted perhaps two to three years, Bollinger said.

The road work will begin Monday. The road will be paved anew from the intersection to the city limits sign, which is about 3,300 feet. The project will cost the city roughly $15,000 for materials. The work will be done by the city's street department.

bmiller@semissourian.com

243-6635