Peachtree City has selected a longer-lasting approach to repave Dividend Drive, the main artery in the city’s industrial park.
It will cost $1.4 million to redo the whole road, but city staff was skeptical of a cheaper job to patch problem sections instead. The patch job could have damaged the adjacent “good” sections of pavement.
Moreover, an engineering study of the underside of the road determined that there is no adequate base layer under some sections of the road, staff reported.
Because of that, the city will use a process called full depth reclamation in which part of the road surface is recycled to provide a solid base for the top coating of asphalt.
The full depth reclamation process gives the city an expected 10-year life cycle for the road before additional repairs would be necessary.
The work is expected to begin this summer.
Councilman Eric Imker said he preferred trimming the project to omit repaving for the work south of Falcon Field Airport because he felt that section of road would hold up for another few years, saving $380,000. But Councilwoman Vanessa Fleisch disagreed, noting that business prospects who fly into Falcon Field could get the impression that the city doesn’t maintain its infrastructure adequately.
Councilman George Dienhart said he agreed Dividend Drive was “the gateway to the industrial part of the city.”
“We’ve have to invest in this and fix our economic development engine,” Dienhart said.
The city is expected to receive about $161,000 in state aid for the project, though had it been scaled back to Imker’s suggestion some of those funds would not be available.
Imker voted against the project, which got a 4-1 approval from council.
Imker said he would vote no because he wanted the emphasize the city needed to be looking at cost cutting. He agreed that the sections of Dividend north of the airport needed to be repaired, and that they had deteriorated since the road pavement was initially studied by staff and a consulting engineer last year.
