Driving On Dirt City Doesn’T Have A Systematic Program For Getting Its Unpaved Streets Paved

If driving Spokane’s rutted and rotting paved streets is a jarring experience, try driving an unpaved stretch.

They surprise you, these dusty, dirty, cratered blocks. You’re cruising along a paved street when — BAM! — it’s as if the asphalt has been pulled out from under you.

Like flu and taxes, no one is immune. Unpaved blocks can be found in nearly every city neighborhood — north and south, rich and poor, young and old.

In Jack O’Brien’s view, these unimproved, unpaved streets are the city’s “hidden shame.” The nearly lifelong resident beams as he talks about the 13 children he raised here and the City Council he served on that helped bring Expo ‘74 to Spokane. But his pride vanishes when he points to a nearly impassable dirt stretch of 46th Avenue bounded at both ends by pavement.

“It’s ironic when you think that Expo was about the environment,” said O’Brien, 78. “These streets contribute to air pollution.”

In a recent letter to Mayor John Talbott — complete with photographs of his most horrific examples — O’Brien urged current council members to attack the unpaved street problem with the zeal of religious converts.

“We need to change the city’s street maintenance policy — grade the dirt streets! Open up the impassable street right of ways! Form paving local improvement districts by resolution!” O’Brien wrote. “These accomplishments will make Spokane healthier (less dust), happier (no more round-about routes) and handsomer (clean, smooth, safe streets).”

O’Brien is asking the City Council to revisit a now nearly abandoned policy that had one city employee forming local improvement districts to pave streets. The districts assess homeowners over a 10-year period for the cost of paving.

Dave Mandyke held the job before being appointed assistant city manager for governmental relations in 1997. In his former post, Mandyke spearheaded street paving in neighborhoods - establishing the boundaries of an LID, setting a hearing before the council and notifying neighbors. Under state law, neighbors could stop the LID formation only if a coalition of property owners owing 60 percent of the total paving cost opposed the project.

These days, “there’s nobody there promoting (LIDs) or actively working to get them through,” Mandyke said.

Larry Neil, Spokane’s acting transportation director, would like the city to return to a more proactive stance about street paving.

“We’d like to be able to step in and do all those things, but we don’t have the people or the resources to get out and take all those things on,” Neil said.

O’Brien contends many neighbors don’t know they can form an LID to share the cost of street paving. If the city hired someone to fill Mandyke’s old job, most of the LIDs formed by the city would win neighbors’ approval, he said.

“My contention is that probably only one-third would fail,” O’Brien said.

Mayor Talbott said he plans to push an aggressive street paving policy in the near future.

“We need to be forcing that kind of thing,” Talbott said. “You’ll see a half street not paved. It’s ridiculous. We need to stop that kind of thing.”

Currently, about 50 miles of Spokane’s approximately 850 miles of streets remain unpaved, said Ken Brown, a project engineer for the city’s construction services department.

Mandyke successfully pushed LIDs to pave an average two miles of street each year from 1995 to 1997. While it may sound like a small accomplishment, most of the districts are one to two blocks long, with each block about 330 feet.

The number of miles paved each year has dropped to less than half a mile a year since Mandyke left, with most of those LIDs taking place in community development neighborhoods where federal dollars help pay the bill.

Currently, no LIDs are being formed while Initiative 695 is worked out in the courts. The measure requires a public vote on any tax increase, and some argue that assessments for road improvements qualify for election. In March, I-695 was declared unconstitutional by a King County Superior Court judge, but court challenges continue.

“We’re optimistic we’ll be back in the construction business by next year,” Mandyke said.

Paving one block with an LID costs about $65,000. That’s more than it would cost to hire a private contractor to pave a street, Mandyke said. He added the higher price tag largely is due to financing costs and the requirement the city hire union workers.

Neighbors balk at paving their streets for a variety of reasons. Some say they can’t afford it. Others say paving draws unwanted cars to their neighborhood.

“We’d get more traffic. It would change the character of our neighborhood,” said Herb Nelson, who lives near an unpaved block of 44th near Crestline. “Paving would take an otherwise peaceful neighborhood and make it busy.”

Michelle Roy would love to see asphalt cover the 100-foot unpaved stretch of Sitka Avenue beside her north Spokane home. The dirt street is a magnet for bad behavior, she said. “I get up nearly every morning and have to go pick up the litter in the street. We’ve even had men urinating out there.”

When Roy moved into the home 10 years ago, she researched the block’s history. Amazingly, she said, city maps showed all of Sitka paved.

Neighborhood legend says the developer skipped out without finishing the pave job. For about the last 20 years, developers have been required to pave and curb streets.

But unless the city can prove the developer failed to do something he promised to do in his plans, Roy and and her neighbors likely would have to pay to pave the street, Neil said.

“It should have been someone else’s responsibility,” Roy said.

O’Brien has assumed the responsibility as the city’s conscience when it comes to paving. His favorite example of a policy gone awry is the dirt stretch of 46th adjacent to the South Hill Sports Complex, where the Parks Department would pay the majority of the paving bill.

Mandyke tried twice to persuade neighbors there to form an LID, and twice was unsuccessful, he said.

“We tried to convince them this was a good deal, but they didn’t want the street paved,” he said.

Said Neil, “We can’t force an improvement on a neighborhood that doesn’t want it.”