East Valley Road is likely to be sporting patches into the future. Photo by John Hefner
Good Morning, Johnson Laners.
Happy spring everyone and I hope you had a happy Easter.
When Johnson Lane first began it took one man, his kids and a red tractor way back in the 1950s to clear the roadway from what is now 395 up to Vicky Lane. I don’t think much has changed in 70 years.
I believe we can all agree that we have some of the worst roads in the county. Most of the side roads such as Wade, Fuller and Squires were paved only because the state was redoing 395 and they needed a place to put the grindings. Prior to that project, they were all dirt roads.
Late in January, work began on East Valley between Stephanie and Downs. The developer is building six homes and they were required by the county permits to tie into the power and sewer. This meant the digging up of that stretch of East Valley to install the lines and connect the plots to the main lines.
I can appreciate the developers need to save money, however, the result is a patchwork of paving which looks and drives terrible. I can’t imagine laying out nearly a million dollars on a home that has this patch work as its access road.
I then contacted Douglas County Chief Road Guy Jon Erb, who said the county is revamping its permit processing in hopes to prevent such issues in the future. Apparently, the permit was approved without much input from his department. I then asked him a series of questions, here are the answers.
Q: How many miles of roads are in the Carson Valley?
A: There are more than 600 miles of various types of roadways that the county maintains.
Q: How much does the county spends per year on road maintenance and specifically how much is spent in Johnson Lane?
A: It varies from year to year.
Q: Where does the road department get funding?
A: The main sources are a 9-cent per gallon county gas tax, ad valorem tax, property tax for regional roads, general fund transfer of $1,053,638, residential construction tax which is $500 per parcel for new construction and commercial construction tax of $.50 cents per square foot. We have had two ballet questions in the past six years. One was to index the county gas tax to move up with the construction price index increases and the other was to add diesel fuel to the county gas tax. Both were voted down. When I travel, I pay a lot of attention to other states and local jurisdictions roads. We are doing better than most places I’ve been to. Lack of funding for road maintenance is a common issue.
Q: How do we get Electric Vehicles to contribute to road maintenance?
A: The state is working on this with vehicle miles traveled. Lately, if you have registered your car, you know the state is asking for odometer readings. While they haven’t acted on any increases per mile yet, you can bet that will be coming up in the legislature since electric vehicles do not contribute to a gas tax as of today.
Q: Why was the overlay of East Valley between Stephanie and Downs not required?
A: The condition to rebuild East Valley was discussed and did not get put on the plans that were approved by the Planning Commission. (He was not sure about the details.)
Q: Can the county enter into a cost share agreement when developers tear up a road since a new portion should be less costly to maintain than an older layer?
A: Only if there is budget available. Also, there are requirements in state law for getting multiple bids on projects that are government funded. If it is over $100,000, then we have to do prevailing wage and submit validation to Nevada Department of Labor.
Q: How do we change it so when a road is more than 50 percent patched the company doing the patch has to redo the completed section as a whole instead of patches?
A: That would require a change to code and county commissioner approval. This could be an issue with utilities like Southwest Gas and NV Energy upgrading their facilities.
Q: What do you think the impact of 150 gravel trucks will be on Johnson Lane?
A: Without all the data, I would be only taking a guess as some roads do better than others based on age, construction materials and moisture content.
Q: A road survey was done on Johnson Lane and it meets code as a collector road and heavy truck traffic. Can you confirm the results of that survey and the date it was completed?
A: There were several Geotech reports done on specific sections of the road over the years the latest 2019 was the section from Heybourne to Vicky for the county project.
Q: One of the priority projects is to reconstruct Johnson Lane from Heyborne to Vicky but it will take over $3 million to complete. Any ideas on where the funds will come from to accomplish this task? Can the state provide any funding?
A: This project has been added to the Carson Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Transportation Improvement Plan. We want to receive Surface Transportation Block Grant money for the project from the state. It has not released any information on how much they are going to give the state planning organizations in their upcoming budget.”
Unfortunately, it appears we are going to be stuck with that patchwork along East Valley.
County Engineer Jeremy Hutchings said the applicant said during a Jan. 9, 2020, meeting that they were not doing a road surface. However, on May 26, 2021, the developers design engineer said. “Street cuts are not shown since we are removing the entire street section and rebuilding the section per Douglas County Details.” Hutchings said the permit did not require the rebuilding of the street and when the contractor inquired about it the county responded the contractor was “obligated to comply with the approved plans and terms of the permit, neither of which required the reconstruction of the road.” He admitted the road is not “aesthetically-pleasing” and further states he has recommended that the contractor apply a Type II slurry seal coat along the project frontage”. He also promised to consider such oversights for future permit applications.
Hutchings put me in touch with the design engineer, who said the road was substandard to begin with and was under the impression the road was scheduled to be redone. He said he was going to revisit the issue with the partners to see if the county’s recommendation of a Type II slurry can be done.
It would be ideal if the developers took more pride in the work being done and had agreed with the overlay that was already quoted in the bid or at the very least do the Type II slurry.
However, we as citizens need to demand more from our county representatives, developers and contractors. This could have been prevented and we could have better results. Our employees, planning commissioners and District Commissioners need to stand up for the communities. This fiasco is now going to cost more to maintain and more to repair over the years. At some point, we need to demand better.
Thank you for sharing a few moments with me. Please send any announcements or organization information to Johnsonlanejournal@outlook.com.
