Residents’ complaints lead city to pave roads

Neighborhood requests and receives $15,000 in street improvements

Paige Richmond

of the Gateway

For the Fairway Estates neighborhood, it’s a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease — or two unpaved cul de sacs getting $15,000 worth of additional asphalt from the City of Gig Harbor.

Earlier this year, the neighborhood’s homeowners’ association began voicing concerns about the city’s plan to repave three streets — 26th Avenue, 37th Street and 39th Street — within Fairway Estates, a community located near Madrona Links Golf Course. The city decided on the plan a few years ago, after assessing several residential streets throughout Gig Harbor and realizing they needed repair.

The repaving project began last summer, when $150,000 was spent to install a thin layer of asphalt on Rosedale Street and Wollochet Drive. The city planned to do the same this summer, spending $279,000 to repave nine residential streets, including those at Fairway Estates.

City Administrator Rob Karlinsey said none of those streets are “crisis situations.” Instead, the repaving is designed to repair cracks in the road before they get any worse, potentially turning into potholes down the line.

But several Fairway Estates residents asked that their uncracked roads be repaved this summer, tacking a $15,000 additional cost onto the project. Almost all of the streets within Fairway Estates would be repaved under the project’s original scope, save for two cul de sacs that held seven homes.

Although both Karlinsey and City Engineer Jeff Langhelm agreed that the cul de sacs are in decent condition and do not need to be repaved for at least two years, city staff agreed to repave them anyway.

Karlinsey said it’s a matter of balancing the city’s needs with citizens’ requests.

“They are our customers, and they do pay taxes, so you want to please the citizens you serve,” he said.

Residents like Chris White, who has lived at Fairway Estates for 27 years, visited the Gig Harbor Civic Center several times over the past few months, expressing concern about the cul de sac on which she lives. She feels the roads’ conditions shouldn’t be the deciding factor on whether or not the city paves them.

“The community needs to look nice,” she said, adding that she fears leaving those cul de sacs unpaved would cause different parts of the neighborhood to have different appearances. “How can (the city) do a halfway job? How can they skip (the cul de sacs)?”

Another of White’s concerns is that the city won’t keep its promise to pave the cul de sacs two years from now, since she believes it took the city far too long to repave the damaged streets in the first place.

That fear is echoed by Connie Brown, president of the Fairway Estates Homeowners’ Association.

“It takes 30 years to get new pavement in there,” she said, referring to when the subdivision was built. “And now, the city (was) not doing those cul de sacs.”

Marcos McGraw, project manager for the neighborhood repaving project, said the streets are in less-than-ideal shape because the subdivision was county property until 10 years ago, when the residents there applied for annexation.

Pierce County tends to use chip sealing — a mix of liquid oil and rocks laid on a road’s surface — to repair roads, which McGraw said is prone to cracking.

Whatever the cause, the city’s engineering department has agreed to repave both the cracked and uncracked roads — and foot the bill. City Engineer Jeff Langhelm stressed that is unusual to “pave for aesthetic reasons,” and that the city’s decision at Fairway Estates is based on money-saving techniques.

“It’s not based on a need,” he said, reiterating that the cul de sacs are in fine condition. “It’s based on better use of money, because then we won’t have to go back to do (the cul de sacs) later.”

The final decision is up to the Gig Harbor City Council. Langhelm has filed a change order for the project, which will be voted on by council members later this month.

Brief street closures

Sections of residential streets will be closed as part of the City of Gig Harbor’s summer repaving project.

Although the paving process should take less than six hours per day, most of the streets are so narrow that the paving trucks will take up too much space to reduce the street to only one lane, project manager Marcos McGraw said.

The following sections will be closed. The city has yet to determine exact dates of the closures, but the projects will begin before the end of July:

Prentice Avenue, from Fuller Avenue to Fennimore Street

Vernhardson Street, from Peacock Hill Avenue to Woodworth Avenue

Fuller Street, from Franklin Avenue to Prentice Avenue

Franklin Avenue, from Burnham Drive to Peacock Hill Avenue

Insel Avenue, from Edwards Drive to Stinson Avenue

Olympic Drive, between Kelsey Lane and Soundview Drive

26th Avenue, from 39th Street to 36th Street

37th Street, from 26th Avenue to the end of the road

39th Street, from 26th Avenue to Point Fosdick Drive