The proposed 2017 street improvement plan was released at the Oct. 24 meeting of the Brookfield Village Board, and what’s clear from the map of streets to be improved next year is that when streets deteriorate to the point where many have to be reconstructed from the ground up, they’re really expensive to build.
The map proposed by Village Manager Keith Sbiral last week indicates that Brookfield will spend about $7 million in 2017 to reconstruct the village’s worst streets and do sewer and water main repairs along those roadways.
The village identified streets for improvement in 2013 when the village engineer rated them on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the worst.
The 2017 street improvement map shows about 22 blocks that need to be addressed next year, or about 2.75 miles of roadway. That contrasts with the roughly five miles of streets improved in 2016 for about $1.9 million.
Those roads, which were 2-rated, and make up almost all of the village’s residential streets south of Congress Park Avenue, were completed as the first leg of a years-long, bond-funded improvement program following a successful referendum in early 2016.
“This illustrates exactly what we talked about during the referendum,” said Sbiral. “If you stay on top of your infrastructure or you maintain your infrastructure and you catch it before it completely falls apart, you do … almost five miles of streets for 1.9 [million dollars].
“When we have to address very seriously critically failing streets we get a lot less for a lot more money.”
Among the 1-rated streets that are proposed for improvement in 2017 are:
North of 31st Street
Sunnyside Avenue between 27th Street and Bartlett Avenue; Forest Avenue between 29th Street and 30th Street, along with 29th Street between Forest and Prairie.
Between 31st Street and the tracks
Garfield Avenue between Maple and Cleveland; the 3100 and 3200 blocks of Raymond Avenue (this work is being funded by a $200,000 federal Community Development Block Grant); the 3100, 3200 and 3300 blocks of Sunnyside Avenue; and the 3200 and 3300 blocks of Vernon Avenue.
South of the tracks
Congress Park Avenue between Raymond and Eberly; Deyo Avenue between Shields and Sahler.
Along with the 1-rated streets, there are a handful of 2-rated streets on the 2017 improvement plan, including Broadway Avenue east of the circle, which is in poor condition and part of a commercial district; Custer Avenue north of Ogden, which is being done in collaboration with Lyons; a half-block length of Rochester Avenue between Custer and Forest that has deteriorated badly since 2013; and Arden Avenue between Brookfield Avenue and Washington Avenue, which is in poor condition and will serve as a main detour route when the Brookfield Avenue bridge spanning Salt Creek is replaced.
Brookfield has already sold the bonds that will fund the road improvements in 2017. The village will seek bids for the work in early 2017, with construction starting in the spring.
