So I really appreciate

All of you guys coming out.

My name's Patrick Waller, be no moment over,

but I'm the city manager

For the city of Rifle and this is, this is Craig Spalding,

he's the city engineer for the city

and he's gonna talk to us about all sorts

of street projects, our street impact fees, our fund,

how it all sort of works from budgetary perspective as well

as we've got plan into this year.

So I end with Craig. Alright, go ahead. Thanks Craig.

So thanks everybody for being here.

I'm the engineer for the city.

I oversee all the capital

and maintenance projects, so that's streets

and then usually all the water

and sewer projects that are out

underneath the streets wind up being mine as well.

And then as we talk to some of the cemetery

or just some of the other stuff that goes along with that.

But tonight we're gonna be talking mostly about

streets projects.

We're gonna kind of go into depth on how we prioritize

and decide which streets we're gonna be working on

and then go into some conditions of what rifle streets are

and then we'll look at some past projects

and then some projects that we have coming up this year.

So there, there's quite a bit of stuff.

So I can speed up or slow down.

Feel free to interrupt me or ask any questions as I'm going.

I'll try to keep it somewhat entertaining for you guys.

So this here, this is the pavement curve.

So basically all of the maintenance on pavements kind

of decided on this.

This is as asphalt gets older

and then this is actually its score.

So a road that's got a zero is failed.

A road that's a hundred is brand new.

You can see the curve's pretty flat

for almost half of its life.

So if you, you build a new road,

it doesn't really start getting bad until the,

after about seven to 10 years.

And then after that it starts falling off really fast.

So what you try to do is when they're in that part

of their life, you do crack seals where you go

through in any of the cracks in the road, you fill 'em with

a joint sealant and then you put, we do HA five,

which is a coating that you can put down on top of 'em

and it keeps the water out.

But basically you're doing anything you can to keep water

and sun from making the road older.

And every time you do that, you can get it close

to being a new road.

It never gets all the way up to a new road,

but you can kind of keep doing those crack seals

and those surface treatments.

And every time you do it kind of bumps it up

and then it ages again, bumps it up.

And eventually we have some roads

and rifles that we can get instead of an average

of a 20 year span, which is an untreated road,

we've got roads that can get 30 to even 40 years

before they have to get replaced,

which is a big thing financially

because everything's cost per square

and then it's cost per year.

So instead of having

to replace all the roads every 20 years,

if we can replace 'em every 40, then

that cost per year goes down half.

The other thing to note is that the,

so for the cost of just a crack seal,

which is something

that you should be doing every five years, so this will be

where we kind of look at the, the budget to the,

but basically it's, it's 60 cents a square yard is

what it costs us on average to do crack seals.

Whereas if you look all the way down at replacements,

they're $77 a square yard, so they're more than 10 fold

more cost and you only get four times

as much life.

So definitely putting a priority on the crack seals

and the surface treatments is what we bank on keeping, it's

what keeps our good roads good.

So we keep our good roads good while we try to fix all

of the ones that are failing.

Basically the way we've split it out in rifle is

a crack seal lasts anywhere from five to seven years.

So basically you're gonna be on average,

sometimes you get more, sometimes you get less,

but on average you're going back to every road.

So every five years.

So basically we take the entire cost of,

if we were to crack seal all a rifle, split that in five

and that's around $60,000 a year

that we put into crack sealing.

And then we do the same thing for surface treatments.

So surface treatments, they last 10 to 15 years.

So we take, if we were to do 'em every 10 years,

so about 125

and some of these, so I'll get into the projects

that we're doing this year, but some of 'em

wind up getting grouped.

So like this year we have a big chip seal project

that we're gonna do this spring.

And it's three big roads.

It's airport road 16th and seventh.

So we didn't do a chip seal last year,

but the one that we're doing this year, it's

I think three 70 to 400,000 is the number on that.

So, so once in a while a project might kind

of take up two years, so you'll still get the same,

but these are the averages that we have to make sure

we're hitting on our maintenance

or else it might feel like we're doing lots,

but then all of these good roads will catch up

to us in 15 years and we won't be where we want to be.

And then replacement, so if you do your job on the,

the crack seals and the surface treatments

basically 35 years on just the replacement.

Something to note with these numbers here is

that's just the street.

So a lot of times the,

so these are, these are maintenance.

So it seems like if you're doing a full replacement,

it might be more of a capital project.

But usually when we go to do a replacement, you wind up

with a water line that's just as old as the road

and then the curb and gutter and the sidewalk.

So that $77 a square yard often winds up

coming up quite a bit.

But we kinda wind up with different funds we wind up with,

there's the water fund that pays

for the water sewer for the sewer.

We wind up getting a bunch of grants to help pay for any

of the sidewalk improvements and all the other things.

So basically if we were to do just the road

and neglect the everything on the sides

and everything below for just maintenance alone, it,

it's about 1.8 a year, 1.8 million just

to, to keep up.

And you can see, so everything in the, the yellow to red

shades are, those are all surface treatments.

So you can see about half of the roads at any given time

and you'll just see these, this, this is a software

that we have that we track.

So every year we go out and we look at every street

and we rate it based on how many cracks it has,

are they going with the road

or against the road, how thick they are,

all the different things.

And then that comes in to give us an overall rating

and a remaining service life of the road.

So this, and then you take that

and then you can kind of determine if it's a really old

road, it's ready for replacement.

If it's new then it needs a chip seal

or a crack seal or an HA five.

But the, the crack seal

you'll see happening pretty much all over rifle every year.

And I kind of compare it

to you just kinda run it independent.

So I compare it to kind of like washing your vehicle.

So sometimes you might be go camping the next weekend

so you're like, well should I wash it?

But it's always gonna make your vehicle last longer if

you're doing those crack seals.

So crack seal kind of runs independent of all

of the other projects, whereas the other projects they wind

up having to take in quite a bit of the other stuff.

So one of the bigger other stuffs is waterlines.

So, so rifle has 76 miles of waterline.

This is a map of our waterlines with its rate

and it's color coded by its priority of replacement.

But essentially waterlines, if they were

to last a hundred years, we would have

to replace 1% every year.

And that's, if they last a hundred years,

they usually don't last that long.

But even at, if they were to last a hundred years,

we'd be replacing 1% every year.

So for rifles 76 miles, that winds up being three quarters

of a mile of which

is 11 350 foot blocks per year.

We would need to be replacing of waterline.

So most of these blue roads,

those are our replacement roads.

Basically the, the priorities of the replacement roads

wind up getting prioritized almost as much

by the road as they do the water

and the sewer for the most part other than,

so in the last, in the last three to five years, most

of our bad roads were also our main roads.

So Railroad Avenue work on White River.

So it was really easy to prioritize those

because they're roads that impact everybody.

But as we start getting further off of those roads, most

of the priorities will, there's gonna wind up being lots

of balancing between the basically the water and the sewer.

And then there's gonna be times

where the most important sewer line isn't

underneath the most important road,

which is different than the most important water,

which is once we get into some of this year's projects,

you'll see we have, we have some water and sewer

and road projects kind of all over

because we have different priorities for each one of them,

all of which are super important for us to address.

So I've got some pictures that I was gonna go over for some

of the kind of like the last five years projects, but

before I do so that that'll kinda lead us into

what our existing conditions are.

But before I do that, does anybody have any questions

or anything they wanna address on just

how we prioritize and rank our streets?

Okay, so I'll kind of go through these somewhat quickly.

Some of 'em, it's just kind of good to see

what the streets of the kind of before

and afters, you kind of forget how bad some of them were.

So basically this is looking

almost right outta city hall.

So only six years ago

there weren't any of the improvements to Centennial Parkway

and basically the, the sidewalks were out of compliance,

the streetlight needed repaired.

So 2019 we were able to take basically the corner of town

and by making all of those improvements,

which was also water improvements

and sewer, make it to what it is now

and then just some quicker ones, swallow Lane,

that's second Street.

This is a good one to mention

because we actually worked with Rocky Mountain Natural Soda.

So this is kind of right out in front of their,

their complex there.

And they actually did a big cost share.

So the road was getting pretty tore up by their,

their large trucks and they were really great to work with.

And basically we needed to replace the road with just,

it would be normally just asphalt, but

because of the size of their trucks, they are willing

to work with us and then gave us a,

did a cost share on the project

and did this big concrete apron

that lets those trucks pull out

and turn out without causing damage.

So you can kind of see the before and after.

And it just kind of shows some of the community partners

that we wind up with on some of these fravor and fifth.

So only about five years ago there was

basically going up the hill, the sidewalk, it went up

and then just ended at a retaining wall

and it was also at the blind part of the hill.

So if you were walking up, you would get to this dead end

and then you'd have to run across

and hope no cars were coming over.

So we were able to basically replace all this failed asphalt

and we also replaced the waterline, which

was originally installed in like the fifties.

So Waterline got replaced, road got replaced,

but then this was another one,

an example of where we get grants.

So this one got a big grant from the car,

Garfield County Federal Mineral East District.

So basically any of the money that the,

that mineral leases on federal lands in our area,

it winds up kind of going back to the state

and then to the county and then the county distributes it

via grants and they wind up funding quite a few

of our projects, especially some of these big road projects.

So we're able to not only fix the failed asphalt,

but also make the road a lot safer and replace the water.

And I think on this one we also did some

of the sewer manhole.

So this was kind of the, the full swath

we try to, at least every other year do we just call it an

asphalt patching and overlay project.

So 2019 you wind up, you find spots.

So this is actually right at the crest

of the hill, a fire thorn.

So at the top you can see just how failed the road was there

and we just put out a contract and we go out

and fix patches sort of all over.

Sometimes it's an entire road

or like in this case it was just about a hundred feet

of road that gets replaced.

But they're really, they're kind of quick projects

with a big return on basically the before and after

and what we're getting out of the project.

This one shows Fire Thorn 2019.

Another thing that streets covers is bridges.

And so we have addressed basically all of our bridges

at least in the last five years.

So this shows the 16th Street bridge, which is the bridge

by the skate park going across Rifle Creek.

You can see before it had a lot of,

so it was getting a lot of water through the, the sidewalk

and then that was getting on all the girders

and causing rust and structural damage.

So we were able to chip all the concrete out

and then put down a special coating

and a paint basically to so sandblast to get rid of the rust

and then put down paint to keep it from rusting anymore.

And then you can see a new deck, new sidewalk,

basically just to make sure that these bridges stay.

So if if you address this, then

you can keep it from turning into a,

a major structural issue,

the the Railroad Avenue bridge.

So we went through and waterproofed it

and resurfaced it just a couple years ago, you can see just

how pitted and failed the surface was before we began.

And then we stripped all the asphalt off

and then stripped off the old waterproofing

and then re waterproofed it

and then put down the new asphalt.

And probably, I think it was one of the bigger costs

and you don't see it, but it was actually the

waterproofing that we put down.

So the most important part, so basically bridges fail due

to rust and corrosion and grit.

So if you can keep all that water on the surface

and coming off the edges, you can make bridges

and especially in Colorado in the drier climate last

for, for very long times.

So that waterproofing definitely extended that bridge

and probably had more of a benefit than

the surface that you can see.

But the surface is still pretty nice to drive on

the centennial bridge.

So the,

this is the bridge going across Rifle Creek on highway six.

So Highway six is what we call it's Centennial Parkway.

So it was devolved, which is a process where

CDOT gives the right of way to the city.

So from the bypass

and one mile to the east is the city, so

that's Centennial Parkway.

So basically that was 10,

15 years somewhere in there

where the city went through that process.

And then by going through that process, they're able,

the city we're able to do projects

or add signs or do things on that stretch of roadway

where if it was still cdot we'd have to go

through all the CDOT processes and the purview.

So it gives us a little bit more flexibility on

how we develop and maintain those roads.

So that bridge was actually ours

and we took the entire deck off, as you can see here.

So went and shipped all the concrete off

and then did an inspection of the girders

and found, so anywhere that the girders were pitted

or rusted, we actually cut out new sections

and then welded new sections in

and then X-ray inspected those.

So essentially when we were done, every one

of the steel girders was like brand new

and then it wound up getting a brand new deck.

So, and,

and that project, the cool thing about that is we were able

to essentially we wound up with a brand new bridge,

or at least the lifetime of a brand new bridge.

And we did it for just short of a million dollars, which

is is actually pretty usually when they're,

people are talking about bridges,

they're talking tens of millions.

So for us to get it at that price was, was a huge success.

So did you do the

flood routing under on right underneath?

Underneath that bridge?

Yep. Yeah. So originally it was,

and that's part of what caused some of the, so

that abutment in the middle, the

creek had actually kind of shifted to

where it was just pointing right at it

and it was kind of creating some scour in front of it.

So what we did is we put a bunch of rip wrap

or angular rock to make the creek stay in between

these two abutments.

So this is where the creek stays during normal time.

And then ideally, so the way it was designed

is when we get a regular high water,

it'll actually flush out all of the silt.

So they, they get the angle of all of that to where it,

it'll silt up during low flows

and then in the spring it'll flush that out

and then if it gets higher than that,

it can basically overtop that

and then run in between these abutments.

But we were able to, to improve

not only the low flow but kind of the flood characteristics

of the bridge

Downtown.

So these are some pictures before it kind of hard to imagine

or remember back some of those, this, this was a,

a crosswalk right at third where you can see the,

the light came right out of the middle of the a DA ramp,

which is not really compliant.

You can't really get through there.

And then you can also just see how SPD and the concrete was

and how everything was coming apart.

And then this is the, just a screenshot of in the summer,

what this, that ramp here.

So that picture, there was that same ramp there

that's now fully compliant.

So this project, the railroad project replaced all of the,

the water lines downtown

and it did it, so we replaced it with a 12 inch line,

which is big enough if any

of these buildings wind up needing fire suppression,

it can supply enough flow.

So it, it took the old line and then up-sized it.

So not only replacing the old infrastructure

but to putting a new, and then we also went

and replaced all of the, the services as well.

So there was some of the, some of the buildings,

the services, especially on this side, the,

so it'd be east third, they had just like crawl spaces

and then there was only about this much

and they made enough to

where the skinniest guy on the job site could go through

that little trench from one end of the building all the way

to the other and then replace the service.

So there was a lot of, lot of blood, sweat and tears

and just getting some of those replaced that, that one,

the guy he could go through and then fall through

and then he could stand back up and replace it.

But the only guy that was small enough

to do it was actually a, a concrete worker.

So then he had to put on his phone

and have everybody tell him he wasn't a, a water guy,

but he was the only one small enough to fit in the hole.

This, this project had a lot of surprises for you, didn't

It?

It did, yeah. So there was, so there was, we

expected surprises, but there was some that we didn't even,

like in front of the Midland building,

there was actually an old, the sidewalk was just on plywood

and then there was a big staircase that went into the,

so we were chipping out the concrete

and then there's a piece of plywood and we picked it up

and it's just a big cavern

and concrete stairs going into the, the basement.

And then almost every building had old coal shoots.

So you would chip out the sidewalk

and then it would just be a,

and they just poured right over the top so there'd all

of a sudden be a big hole into the side of a building.

So we'd had a lot of those foundations we'd have to go

through and patch with concrete and patch it

and then re backfill and waterproof those.

So lots of, lots of nostalgia there.

We wound up, we found, so on the corner of,

so it'd be in front of the Midland building,

there was an old storm inlet

and when we went to tear it out,

it had a bunch of silver dollars.

Oh cool. We were like, well that was pretty cool.

So we took them and then I wound up, I found the story that,

so it was actually an, an old, old relative,

but they worked when, where Witten CO is now was the bank,

they would walk out and they would flip their silver dollar

and whoever got closest to the curb had to buy coffee,

but if they messed up, their silver dollar would go down.

So we found out that those silver dollars were most likely

theirs from their, yep.

Yeah.

Oh,

The bank, the bank was on this side,

the left side was production credit association.

I think you gotta go further

This I

Get, yeah.

Is that production credit there?

That was the production credit association

And then the other side was a bank

Way back.

Okay. Yeah.

So it was, it was, did you know Jim Lane was the one

that would flip the PC?

Yep, yep,

So now I, I have a shelf in my office now

of all these little tidbits.

So I got little pieces of the old bridges

and every time we do a project, try to put

something on there.

So one thing we didn't really go into when we completed it,

but the, the downtown project actually wound up getting two

national awards, one from the American Concrete Association

and then one from the American Concrete

Pavement Association.

So as far as the, the installation

and all of the, the final product, it wound up being a,

a pretty heavily awarded project, which was, was kind

of cool Once, yeah, yeah,

2022 asphalt improvements.

So this is right in front of Moki Park.

This seventh Street had been failed

for quite some time.

This is another one of those projects where we just jump

around and fix fix chunks.

So this is just kind of like the, the best before and

after of the 2022 Asphalt paving

and overlay Second Street.

So Second Street's actually wound up getting a couple

of grants, which is why we were able to do so much of it.

Both of those grants came from cdot.

So the first one, the first phase

of it just did this sidewalk.

So they gave us 50 grand

and I think the sidewalk costs 70 grand.

So we contributed 20 of our own

and then they increased their grant to 250.

So we were able to go back again

and get the rest of the street.

But you can look here, so this is on the north side

of second Street, so only a few years

ago you can see the sidewalk.

That's, that's what the sidewalk was.

And then on the south side there wasn't any sidewalk at all.

So we were able to replace the sidewalk and the street.

And then this one we were also, we had

some storm drain issues that we were able to replace.

So we did put new storm drain all the way up Second Street

and then this lot here is lower than everything else.

So we were able to stub that storm in to this lot

and then stub a water service in there.

So as we're doing projects, if there's the ability to try

to get something in the ground so

that the next person doesn't have to do it, we always try

to take, take that opportunity,

The signal.

So this, this picture here,

this is actually from the Google Street car.

So if you actually go on Google Earth

and you drop in, that's actually the image.

So when the Google car went by with their camera,

there was actually somebody just

on their phone walking through the middle.

So that was kind of the before and then the

after of that project, which to date

as far as vehicle crashes has been super successful in,

I, I'll probably get the data wrong,

but there was in, from the time it finished

to earlier last fall, we ran an audit of

how many crashes there were.

And at time, that time there were no crashes.

And in the same amount of time

before the project there were 10.

So there's a lot less crashes happening there.

And we have given pedestrians something better

to cross than right through the middle of the island.

So fifth and railroad.

So that was another intersection project

where we got CDOT funding.

So they funded just the a DA improvements, which we started

the fall two years ago and then worked through the winter.

So you can see this is the sidewalk here.

You can tell it's far from a DA accessible, you couldn't,

you could, you almost had

to turn sideways just to walk through it.

And then this is that same corner now the,

this corner, there actually wasn't even a curb drop off,

it was just vertical curb.

So you'd have to step down off of it

and then now it's got, got the ramp.

And then once we finished that, we did the,

the railroad fifth to ninth.

That one was a, so it was the

highest priority street project

and one of the highest water.

So it was primarily a water project we've had,

we wound up having quite a few breaks in the water line at

the intersection of fifth.

So it was an old ductile line.

And then the line that we were replacing had a line

that ran from there and then through alleys

and it was an eight inch line, went through a bunch

of alleys and then all the way up to ninth

and White River kind of in front

of the district office for the school.

And we couldn't, so anytime you had a break

or you had to do maintenance, the only way to shut off

that spot was to shut all the way from,

from ninth to fourth.

So you had to shut off almost the entire downtown

just to do any work there.

So we were able to abandon that old line

by kinda systematically shutting things off.

And then in one day we had to do four swap overs.

So we had to basically get everything exposed the day before

and then turn everything off that morning

and then have multiple crews working in different spots

to try to get the line all shut off, drained off

and then capped, put back together

and get people back in service at least by at evening.

So this was a huge street project as well.

You can kind of see how failed Railroad Avenue was

before we started, but probably,

I don't know, debatable the, the water improvements were,

were pretty big as well.

And we also, on railroad, we were able to line

the sewer line from eighth Street to ninth Street.

So there you, you take a, the, the sewer line was old

material but still had good grade.

So we were able to run basically

a heated up plastic pipe in the middle of it

and then you inflate it and then let it cool.

So then it puts, you wind up with basically a superior

'cause it, there's no joint from that manhole all the way

to the next, so no leaks in or out

and you can do it for a lot less

impact and a lot less money.

So it's, it's kind of the, the lining is basically a,

a better product for less money.

So we got to, on this one, we got

to fix basically everything, the water, the sewer,

the sidewalks added lighting.

We wound up having to do a lot of night work.

Basically it wasn't,

it was night work started in the morning

and then just worked some of those.

Water shutoffs were I think some of the,

like the sewer switch over wound up being 16 or 18 hours.

But when we were working in there in the dark,

you could see from basically if you get off the highway

to fifth Street, there's street lights all the

way and then they stopped.

They didn't pick up again until the fairgrounds

and you didn't realize how dark that street was

until you're working in the night.

And so huge improvement to get those lights as well.

So basically kind of with all of those projects,

this is the basically the ratings that we have

for our streets now

where red is everything that needs.

So it's all, this is all by remaining service life.

So everything

and we put all of this into a software so it winds up kind

of lumping things together.

But you can see most of our streets right now

are in that we have a big chunk in the four to six range.

I think we did. And it was with the state.

We did an audit of our, our streets

and then a lot of the other agencies that

did the audit with us

and our streets basically rated it a 61,

which if you are thinking of going to school

and a a 60 would be a D is not the greatest,

but 61 for streets is actually about

as good as you can do.

So a hundred is basically perfect.

So if you have, and then the,

they call it the complaint line, but basically a 40

and below is where you're starting to see lots of potholes.

So basically the best you can ever really be is somewhere in

the middle between 40 and a hundred.

So you're always gonna, you wanna replace 'em

before they get below 40,

but you're always gonna be, the average

of all your streets is gonna wind up should be,

in a perfect world you would have an even distribution so

that you're, you're just on a cycle.

So in a perfect world you'd be basically right in between

that 40 and a hundred.

So 60 is actually a, a decent spot to be.

And I guess before I was gonna take this

and then talk about some of our projects

that we have this year, but

before I do, does anybody have any questions on this

or the ratings or anything else we've gone over?

No, that's it. Oh, thank you.

So I was just gonna kind of take this map

and then you can see these red streets,

the first couple slides.

So, so this is,

these are all projects we're gonna do this year

and these lines don't come in super great.

So I can just kind of point 'em out. This is everything.

We're in a crack seal this year

and you can kind of see it's just scattered

kind of throughout.

These are, so basically a lot

of these smaller streets in South Rifle

Park Avenue and then a lot

of these like Highlands East and then North Rifle.

So most of these are all neighborhood streets

and the crack seal, when we go

and do it, it's usually, so it's a pretty quick operation

but it's usually, it doesn't affect traffic as much.

But if it's in a residential area

and people are home all day,

it does wind up being kind of loud.

So they go through with a giant compressor

and then blow all the dirt out of the cracks

before they put 'em in.

So they have to clean it. So that's the kind

of the common complaint is

that if people are staying at home, they have to listen to

that compressor run all day.

And then sometimes the, in cleaning the streets, some of

that gets on the sidewalk, they, they always have

to come back at the end and clean it off,

but sometimes there's just so much dirt they can't,

it's gotta go somewhere

and it can't go on the road that they're trying to clean.

So it winds up getting pushed to the edge

and then they do other crack seal

and then they come through with leaf blowers

and push it back into the middle.

But this'll be, we're shooting for April.

I think the, the bids

for this project actually come in this week

and then it'll go to council for award.

But kind of, it'll just be like, most of these

are on the order of magnitude of hours on, on a street.

So it's kind of a rolling operation, lower impact,

but a little noisy, a little dirty.

So all the red is under one contract?

Contract? Yep. Requested

Just

One bid on?

Yep. Wow. So sometimes, so we're actually,

this will be like our last catch

up year on the crack ceiling.

So we kind of got behind a little bit on it

and about five years ago we've been putting a big emphasis

on getting caught back up.

So in the past they've been like really targeted in a spot.

So like five years ago everything was a north rifle

and then we kind of picked neighborhoods,

whereas this is gonna be sort of like the everything else

to get us to where we should be.

So at the end of this crack ceiling project,

we'll be actually pretty nice and caught up

and we might, we are actually starting to see some

of the cracks from the first project six years ago now.

We'll probably start having

to do some more maintenance on those.

So, but that's kind of where you wanna be is just

that, that rotation.

And then this is our chip seal.

So it's airport road basically

where the concrete ends at the roundabout to

where the new asphalt starts, which is

basically right at the last driveway of Walmart

and the chip seal on airport road

because there's so many lanes they're gonna be able to do,

it's gonna be sort of a rolling detour.

So they're always gonna be in one lane,

but we don't expect closures

and we expect the impacts to be

minimized by the fact that there's four lanes

and we'll be able to keep people in one

of those lanes at any given time.

When they go and actually do the chip seal, it'll be,

I don't know that they'll do airport road seventh

and 16th all in one day,

but it's pretty amazing how fast they wind up.

So they put all the oil down

and then they have a piece of equipment

that just pulls the trucks through

and they just basically as fast as they can drive,

they're putting the chip down on the new oil.

And then

Is that a double pan or just

More?

It'll be two. So we've got, well

I think both of these are just a one,

so just a three eights.

So a and then we'll do a fog coat.

So the, sometimes we do a a three quarter chip,

which is a three quarter inch piece of rock

and then a three eights rock.

And then the three eights kind

of fits into all the little holes,

but on, you only do that if you need a little bit,

if you're going for a little extra wear surface.

But on like seventh

and 16th the, the three eighths will be fine.

So they'll, they'll go through, they'll do the three eighths

and then when they're able, they'll come back

and do what they call a fog coat,

which is just spraying the black oil down.

Again, that extends the life a little bit,

but it also helps the, the striping show up.

So when they first do it, it'll just look real gray

and then that second coat makes all the striping shows up

and then it holds all those rocks in a lot better.

Sometimes when they do the chip seal you will see like some,

they call it chip loss, especially in the first couple days

where some of the rocks come up.

The reason, so,

and that's why we're doing these on high traffic roads.

So chip seal, the best thing to do

for chip seal is to drive on it.

So like a road like airport road, it'll be done

with its chip loss pretty quick.

Whereas like residential streets sometimes aren't the best

for the, the chip seal because you'll put it down

and it can even take years

before all those rocks quit coming up

and they wind up in curb and gutter.

So on the, on the residential streets, we use

what's called HA five, which is, it's kind

of like a seal coat, but it has a better binder so it lasts.

We've got roads that we put it on four

or five years ago and they look identical to the day

that they put the stuff down.

So it's, it's a better candidate for the low traffic roads.

It basically does the same thing as chip,

it costs a little bit more,

but you don't wind up with all the rocks

and stuff in your curb and gutter

and having to deal with that.

We are doing the joints

and the, the surface of the bridge coming into town.

So that's scheduled to start in March.

That goes to council tomorrow for award.

So that was part of the devolution

that I talked about earlier

where CDOT gave us that right of way.

The actual bridge itself, the structure is still C dots,

but the surface is ours, so we're gonna be doing

the, the surface of it.

One of the things that needs replaced is the joints,

which is the structure, but we're working

with CDOT on reimbursement.

So we'll basically be able to do the joints

and then the surface so everything will be taken care of

and then anything that was their scope,

they reimburse us for.

I think one of the things to note with the,

the bridge joints themselves is there's like the

existing ones have a metal joint that has these metal studs

that go into the concrete and they have to go

and chip all the concrete to get those out.

But just below that is the actual structure of the bridge.

So they can't, if they go too deep, then they're actually

could be getting into the structure.

So it winds up being more tedious than a normal.

Normally if you're breaking concrete you just get

to go keep breaking.

But the, the actual demo of the bridge joints will

usually go slower than you'd think.

So it can take as much as three days

per per lane just for the demo.

Just 'cause it's such tedious work to make sure

that they're, they're getting it out but not going too deep

and not causing any damage.

So there'll probably be days where you drive by

and wonder what they did all day.

'cause in the morning they were here

and the next he would come back

and they're still just right there,

but it is pretty tedious work getting all that chipped.

Once they get that and then get 'em poured, everything will,

the milling and the asphalt will go pretty quick.

So that's the, the bulk of the time is all that demo.

And then once we get through that it's just mill it all

and put new asphalt down

Birch Avenue.

So that's this year as well.

It's another, it's a water project

but Birch Avenue is also falling apart.

So it's a, it's a good spot to be doing, doing work

and replacing roadway.

It's replacing a water line

that goes from our new water plant,

which the new water plant is here

and then all the way to the Deerfield tanks,

which are the big tanks you can see above the park.

So this year we plan on replacing half of it

and the existing line is an old ductile line

that has shown enough corrosion that we definitely need

to be replacing it

and we're replacing the new one that the existing one kind

of runs through Highlands East and it's not very accessible.

It was all put in easements

but now there's tough sheds right up to 'em and fences

and houses and because it, it was put in well

circa fifties and sixties.

So a lot's changed up there since then.

So the new water line will go in right of way.

So not only is it replaced new,

but it's also gonna be in a protected corridor

where if we do need to do maintenance it winds up

accessible for forever.

Is that what all the pot polling was about?

Yep, yep, yep.

So the potholing, so as

of 20 17 18,

there's actually a senate bill that requires any,

so any pipeline project of a certain length

or any government project to do

what they call a subsurface utility engineering survey.

So we're required to, before we put the water line in to go

and pothole every crossing, which actually when you go

to put it in, relieves a lot of unde.

Basically the, the intent is that when you go to build it,

everything that you're crossing,

you know you're gonna miss instead of digging

and then the contractor finds it

and now you're trying to raise the water line

or lower the water line or do something to miss it.

All of that's vetted in the beginning.

So that's what all that pothole was. And just

To comment on early potholes in the winter was

they got a holes that deep they never filled back up.

Okay.

Dogwood and

Birch.

Dogwood and birch, okay, we'll make sure they get that.

So you guys are gonna be working up there at the same time

they're gonna put in, there was flagging put in for,

what am I thinking?

High speed internet or whatever.

There's flagging along the roads

and I think that's what they said they were putting in

a optical fiber. Fiber. Fiber.

Fiber optic fiber. Oh, fiber optics.

Yes, yes.

Is that on birch?

The rug birch and then it goes up, goes up seventh.

Yeah. Do you think that, did you guys do flagging up there?

Did you put in flagging

Any of the red pin, flex and yellow?

Any of the red and yellow

would've been part of that pothole.

So okay, so that's, so basically what you do when you do

that is you call in for locates and they come in

and they locate all of the, the gas and the water

and the sewer and the fiber optic, anything

that's in the road, they locate it to the best

that they can get with the locators.

And then you look at where your water line's gonna go.

And then anywhere that your water line crosses one

of those you actually have to dig up

and find and then survey.

So they, if they're crossing a gas line, they dig it at

that spot and then survey it

and then that way when they do the plans for the water line,

they know if they're above or below

or sometimes you have to relocate things,

which takes time. So, okay.

I think I would be,

Could be that,

but it doesn't mean sometimes the utility companies

have different schedules than we know of.

So yeah.

And then this, so this will be a two year, so the,

this year the goal is to get tomorrow draw or ninth street

and then it'll, the project will end.

So the new water treatment plant treatment plant.

And you guys are tying it into the water tanks? Yep.

How is it tied in now? It's not at all

Now it's tied in through an old ductile line

that basically goes straight up through Highlands East.

So it has a line that ties them in.

Now it's a 16 inch that's

pretty corroded.

Is that one that you can run through,

expand and

Do the liner?

No. So the risk with that is you have to shut to do it,

you have to shut the water down, which

because, so that's the line that feeds every drop of water

and rifle goes through that.

So it leaves the plant and goes through that.

So we can only shut that line down for

like in the summer when we're using water more like 24

to 36 hours before we're all out,

which unfortunately is the same time that construction

season usually is too.

But then the other risk is once in a while when you do those

liners they can, like we've had 'em tear, so you'll go in

through and pull it

and if there's something in the pipe it can tear it

and then now you have this tor pipe

and you gotta pull it back out or they can get stuck.

So there, there's a lot of risk to doing it with the liner

that's for this line's not, we can't really risk

running outta water

and it also reduces the diameter.

So the existing one's a 16 inch

and the new one will have a 24 inch diameter,

which will be sized to serve.

If we do have growth, we'll it'll be big enough.

Kinda on the same vein, so that's street project,

marrow drive, so ninth Street.

So it's currently, so we have it designed

and we do plan on work shopping

with council tomorrow on the full.

So we have 1.5 million in the budget.

It's kind of a tough road because it's fallen apart,

but its use is, it doesn't get, it's

debatable on if the use it gets is

$1.5 million worth of use.

So a lot of the problems it has is it has a lot of drainage

that comes from the uphill side of it.

And then on the downhill side you have the steep bank

into the draw.

So the, the plans that we have basically puts a valley pan

and an under drain to get rid of the water

on the uphill side.

And then it actually has a small concrete wall

that holds the lower side.

So it makes it a pretty expensive road.

We usually are able to do, one of the reasons we're able

to do a lot of projects with fewer staff is

because we try not to do rework.

So when we go to do a road, we try to do the water

and the sewer and anything we could need.

So it's the next generation that's there

and we don't want to be back.

So one of the arguments to replacing the whole thing is

that we, we fix it and we're done

and next year we're fixing some other road

and we're not just deferring maintenance

and it turns into maybe less of a,

a financial burden, but we are fairly lean staff

so it becomes more of a time burden which isn't,

isn't negligible either.

So there'll be some level

of improvements happening this year, tomorrow drive

basically just the, the ultimate goal.

It does take a lot of traffic off of 16th

and it also lets us do work.

Like we try to make sure that we're able

to do work on streets and not have

and make sure we have some other way around.

So if we do have work that we need to do on 16th,

we can detour 'em on marrow or vice versa.

So it's important for traffic flow, very important

as we grow that we have that extra tie in there,

but just making sure that we're using our dollars the best

for, for those improvements.

But we should expect some work on there this year when we go

to do it, probably for a large portion of the work,

it'll be closed, it'll probably just be close to through.

So some of those houses that use their

back access for equipment and cars

and access for almost the entirety of the project,

we'll be able to keep access for them.

But for through traffic it'll be closed.

So the, this one is actually our, you,

this is still our street map

and you can see it's red, it's one of our worst roads,

but it's actually our highest priority

waterline project as well.

So this is Ute and fifth.

So it's basically makes up the corner of the care center.

So this project will be this year

it replaces two manholes

and a stretch of sewer line

and then replaces all the water.

And one of the big things it does

with the water replacement is, so

rifles water is on three different pressure zones.

So we have the, basically what is the,

the northeast zone.

So we have the, the tank up at the, the northeast tank

that sits, you, you may may have seen it, maybe not,

but it's up kind of the top of Grand Mesa

and that feeds basically this hilltop.

And then we have the city zone

that feeds basically everything else.

And then there's an intermediate zone,

which takes up the care center

and just kind of that surrounding area.

It's fairly small, but it only has,

right now it only has two feeds

and both of 'em are aging lines.

So by replacing this line, the valve that keeps

that zone at its pressure will also be able to bypass.

So it adds one more redundant line to the intermediate zone,

which is also the zone

that houses the VA in the care center, which are more,

are probably the VA care center

and the hospital are the most critical buildings

to keep in service.

So that water project

greatly improves the reliability of the water in that area.

Water sewer. And then it does extend sidewalk on the,

it'd be the north side of fifth.

So currently it comes up and then stops at the church

and then it Aspen starts again.

So it, it closes that gap.

There's a couple utilities that are getting moved

to the back curb so that we can do that.

But that project is, is a big water and sewer project

and then like a lot of 'em winds up replacing the street

and then adding the sidewalk as well.

And, and that one's another one that's got funding from

Garfield County Federal Mineral Lease District as well

as the Department of Local Affairs.

Both of those are energy impact money.

So energy impact money is, is a big part

of what we do.

Something that's kind of underway now

is the Park Avenue extension.

So this is Centennial Parkway

or Highway six, this is third Street

and then Park Avenue.

So at,

what we are doing is extending Park Avenue all the way down

to Highway six or Centennial Parkway. So

That go through those new apartments.

It goes just, it goes in between the theater

and the new apartments.

So that'll actually be the access for the apartments.

And this spring,

so starting in March, we'll extend Park Avenue to

where there, there needs to be a bridge

and then this over the winter we'll build the bridge

and then by late summer of 2026, we'll have

that completed.

Caught it cut your cough right there.

That's another project that got funded

from Department of Local Affairs.

So they're paying to replace the waterline

basically all the way around the apartments as well

as Park Avenue and the bridge.

So that bridge would basically never happen

without grant funding.

So it's, it's super, super big deal

that we're able to get that.

And then just across the street we have a new park

and ride going in.

So that's gonna extend the, so Park Avenue

and West Avenue will extend to the other side of Highway six

and then end at a park and ride.

We're gonna take the, the

existing parking right at the corner, basically it's going

to the back of the lot, which is privately owned

and then the person that owns

that is then gonna get a corner lot.

So it's a swap,

but basically it's benefits the city

because the more prime real estate winds up with a developer

that can do something with it.

And then we get to put in, put a parking lot adjacent to

railroad and further off the road in

maybe the less desirable.

So it puts the development

where development should do best.

So capacity will be

More?

Yep. Yeah, so there's,

there will always be at least 120 spots.

I think the plans right now call for a hundred

and I wanna say 130 spots.

So there'll be 130 parking spots for,

and there'll be for, for ride share as well as the bus.

But we do, we do see a lot of,

of ride sharing going on there.

Okay, so this is the last one.

This map is actually our sewer map.

You can see there's a lot more red on the sewer map.

So we have quite a bit more work,

quite a bit more catching up to do on some

of these sewer projects Right now.

The, the sewer fund

is hit pretty hard with the new plant that we built in

2014.

So it was, it's a beautiful plant, it works great,

but that took quite a bit of financial burden.

So we're in the process of kinda catching sewer back up.

You can see basically it's kind of the age of development

downtown is where a lot of the oldest sewer

is and the highest priority replacements are.

This little stretch here on railroad

is actually the piece we line.

So this map's not, I need to update that,

but basically we've taken that piece of red

and turned it into a green.

But then this is ninth Street

and then White River, when we replaced,

we lined this and replaced the manhole

and then ran new line to the, to the edge of the project

and we tied into the old line

and where we did the pipe was smashed to about two inches.

So it's a, it's called Orangeburg Pipe,

which is kind of like a, it's basically,

well it's almost like paper mache.

So it's like they actually use pitch, it's like a

basically paper mache with oil instead of water

and over time it just winds up squishing.

So that one's squished to, like I said, about two inches

and it drains basically the,

the housing commercial here and then on White River.

So this year we will be replacing that.

We'll be running the sewer up ninth

Street and then White River.

And when we're on White River, we'll be able to, basically

during the mainline installation we can keep the,

the northbound open,

but then when the services go across,

there's gonna be closures on White River through those,

those portions of the project.

So out of the, the traffic impacting projects,

this one won't be basic, it won't be a super long duration,

but anytime you're messing with White River,

it'll probably have some of the higher traffic

impacts compared to some of the others.

But as you can see here, super critical project

and basically because, so a lot of pipes we're able to

run jetters up through, so we've got cleaning equipment,

so even some of the, the older lines that may

back up we're able to clean

and keep operating this line is actually collapsed

to the point where the only way if it were to back up

to fix it is to replace it.

So basically it's, it's kind of a,

a mission critical one to get replaced before,

before it plugs up.

And I think that's

All Move down.

Yeah. So yeah, I think

that is it, unless you guys have questions

or wanna go back over anything that I talked about.

So

On the Park Avenue one, so that bridge

that's already there, are you replacing that?

I'm not.

So the, the bridge

that's already there is on third Street.

Yeah. So what we're gonna be,

we had a better image.

Yeah. 'cause it was just kind

of confusing since Park Avenue doesn't line up

behind the movie theater.

So this is the newly theater

Area, sorry.

And then this is that third street bridge,

but the Park Avenue will actually extend here.

So behind, it'll be actually to the west.

So it'll be entirely new road that extends.

Awesome. Okay.

We're basically

right beside John's wood.

Yep, exactly.

Okay.

And that's, so phase one is this year

and that gets the road up to

where we're gonna start the bridge project

and also gets access to the apartments

and that's anticipated to finish midsummer.

And then in late fall

or early winter we'll start the bridge

and then do the bridge over the winter

and then start the roadway.

So that 2026 will be when we

finish the whole extension. What

Thinking about thinking park end all the way through.

So it's, there's a few different, so a big part

of it is just traffic.

So it sets us up to where we have railroad,

which is our arterial right up the middle.

And then we have kind of our two collectors, white River

and Park Avenue on the sides.

So that ideally if we, I mean even the traffic

that we have now, it just kind of disperses it.

That makes sense. And then it also, so from just a downtown

and development, it sort of bookends downtown.

So that'll be sort of the new, the new entrance to downtown

and just kind of puts new infrastructure

and connects all these apartments to, it gives them

access to our downtown and

Good access to the program.

Exactly. Yep.

A question that we might not even be able to answer,

but the old bridge over the Colorado River.

Yes. Yeah.

What are we gonna ever do?

There's lots of thoughts

and Kim probably has some, so it's actually owned

by the county and

it has, it has a lot more the,

it's Achilles heel is basically the railroad tracks

that are in front of it.

So we can't get an at grade crossing

to access it from this side.

So it kind of, it makes it hard to I know.

Utilize, yeah. Even

For pedestrian

Traffic.

Yeah. Yep. So, and Kim, you can, I'm Kim Berger. Yep.

And we all think about that bridge

because it's so iconic to Rifle

and it's got a lot of benefit if we could figure out a way

to get over the railroad tracks

so we could make it a pedestrian crossing.

There's also some liabilities. We don't own it.

It is owned by the county.

It's on the National Historic Registry.

So there's

Restrictions, so there's

so some restrictions there.

We've looked at grants to do a structural analysis

of the bridge until we do that

and get a grant to pay for that,

then we really can't even think about

anything to do with it. Can you switch

That picture to that bridge and

Yeah. Just because

This has been decades we're going on. Yeah.

Yeah. So, and, and we all think about it.

So one of the, the, the main challenge with it

is the railroad where the railroad, so from the north end

we won't be able to get access over the railroad.

Yeah. So there is one plan

or thought it's not really even a plan is a way to

maybe trail from the south

under where, or I'm sorry from the north

but the west side from where

Rifle Creek goes under the railroad,

there's potentially enough space there

to do a walking trail there

and then access it up to river that way.

There's a lot that would have to happen to do that

'cause it crosses a lot of private land.

Well isn't that included in this new parking ride? Swap

That So it, the land doesn't,

the swap doesn't go that far down.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yep.

But that we are, we are looking at different

ways to access that.

But until we are able to get a grant to pay

for a structural analysis,

'cause there's, it's right now the, the deck

of it is not safe to walk on.

So we kind of want to know what we would get into

before we took ownership from the county of it.

Well good luck with it. So,

but it is something that we are all thinking about

how do we capitalize on that?

Well I'm glad it's still talked about.

It is very talked about. Thank you

Mike.

And so the only other thing I wanted to touch on that Craig

sort of mentioned is just from the budget perspective, kind

of where we are with our streets.

So we, we get our money from a sales tax

for Street specifically it's three quarters of a cent

percent better than me.

And so that money is specifically allocated two streets.

The other funding source

that we have is every time anyone builds a

residential unit in the city

or a commercial unit

to a lesser extent they pay an impact fee to the city.

And it's meant to be growth paying for added

capacity onto our street network.

So that's kind of where we exist. Then the city.

'cause we get, I, I like talking to you guys

because you're the ones

who are interested in getting yourselves educated on this.

'cause we get a lot of questions of well the city,

you know you have such great parks, you know,

you do such good job with those

and that's a separate funding source.

So they actually, our park system gets more funding

based on city of rifle voters what they passed

than Craig gets for all the maintenance

of the street network in town.

And so that's where we're sort of at a point

that Craig mentioned, we're getting away from sort

of the cooler projects which we can get

more grant funding for.

So downtown third Street, right?

Everyone in needs to fund that project

'cause it's cool pedestrian stuff.

We get to do fancy concrete

work, it's all that sort of stuff.

Then as we are moving away to tomorrow those kind

of projects, the grant funding is less.

So that's why the city took

a run at a sales tax increase for streets two years ago now.

And so just trying to figure out,

Craig does his calculations and we try

and hit that number exactly on

what we need total for maintenance.

'cause right now we're operating in a deficit

with streets. Are

You gonna try that, that voting thing again

at some point? I mean

To Yeah.

You know we don't, we, I don't think council knows it lost

pretty resoundingly 60 40 so it wasn't,

it wasn't very close an option that we can explore.

So we also, another tax pot that we get is

to our general fund and that's 2%

goes into the general fund, which is sort of the, the fund

that we can use for all things.

But because it has a lot of needs associated with it.

So like the entire police department is

funded out of the general fund.

Lots of our public works and snow plows

and that sort of thing comes outta general fund.

So we're working on how can we sort

of subsidize the street fund in the meantime

'cause Craig's doing such great work on all these projects,

we're really getting our

streets up to where they need to be.

But it's sort of just figuring out that funding piece.

So yeah, if you guys got advice on when

to take another run outta the street tax, I dunno we take it

something just timing wise too, like our sort

of like the drop dead is so

probably like 20, 30 ish.

And a lot of that is if you, especially people

that have been here for a long time, if you think back

to like pre 2000, like late nineties

when we didn't have Pasture

North Pasture, we didn't have most of Deerfield

North rifle, Palomino Park was just kind

of getting plowed in.

And then from there to 2008,

like almost 33% of rifle built,

which means that all that a third

of rifle streets will basically come to needing replacement

all about the same time.

So that's gonna hit, that was all

in the early two thousands.

So in the mid 20, like 2030 to 2040

is when a huge chunk of all of our stuff

that seems relatively new now

will all start failing kind of all at the same time.

So some of that's just trying to hedge, we, we've kind

of made it through the, the eighties boom on some of

that infrastructure, but we'll, we'll kind of have

that same thing happen again to us in, well not,

not that far, 10 years down the road.

So making sure we're in a spot that we can see that coming

and then handle it when it does come.

Cool. Really good projects.

And utilizing your funding,

Do you get any funds?

We do, I think

so every year.

So straight tax usually winds up being about 1.4 million

and I wanna say HUTF is like on the 60

to a hundred thousand.

So it's, we get it

but it's not, not a whole lot on what it,

on the grand grand scheme this year we've actually,

we've almost optimized our grant usage.

So usually a grant you, you apply to get a grant

and the most they usually fund is like 80%.

So they'll fund 80 20

or 60 40 this year.

We've actually, we've I think between,

basically between 60

and 80% of our funding this year is grant funding.

So we've almost used all of our funds as a match.

So we, this year especially,

we basically couldn't squeeze another penny out

of the pennies that we, we have to work with.

And then some of those grants, they're, they're kind

of cyclical.

So most of the ones we get are from federal mineral lease.

So they're kind of oil and gas related

and they seem to sometimes even when it's,

I don't know if they lag the booms,

but they, from year to year it seems like we get

a pretty wide, wide variety of funding.

So some of it's political

but then some of it might just be how much they're producing

and then things that are just out of everybody's control.

So the, the tax also gives us,

puts us a little bit more control of our own destiny.

Thank you for doing

Thank you.

No thank you guys for, for coming.

Thank you guys very much.

The next one we have will be sometime in the beginning

of summer, we're still sort of working out.

We're gonna do a quarterly one of these.

So appreciate you guys have been to all these we'll give

but certificate but we're still working through

what we wanna see at the next one.

So if anyone has any ideas,

Angelica will send out a little survey you guys

and yeah, appreciate you taking the time

and really appreciate Craig.

He's, yes, he can tell a lot of his stories.

Start with, well about five

or six years ago, we were not in the best place in that.

He wouldn't say that 'cause he started

about five or six years ago.

We're now in the, in the place where we are.

So we're lucky to have good staff.

Like, so appreciate you guys coming back. Back. Cool.

Thank you. Thank you.