New Lawton City Council committee to help keep track of street projects

Three City Council members will help Lawton city staff keep track of street projects.

Council members have established an ad hoc committee on streets as part of an effort to keep repair and rebuild projects moving forward as the city focuses more money on solutions to problem streets. The effort ties into a proposal city leaders will take to city voters Sept. 12: extending the existing ad valorem street program for another 10 years, providing an additional $60 million for streets and bridges.

The committee — Ward 4 Councilman George Gill, Ward 5 Councilman Allan Hampton and Ward 2 Councilman Kelly Harris — also will be tasked with creating an eight-year plan for streets improvements. Mayor Stan Booker said the plan will be similar to a program used by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) to set priority projects. Booker suggested the ad hoc committee bring in ODOT personnel to help with development of a local plan.

Committee efforts also will go hand-in-hand with a pavement analysis recently completed by Infrastructure Management Services, crafted after the firm drove Lawton arterials, collectors and residential streets to analyze the pavement surface and the support structures underneath.

Booker said the project is crucial, and one that has been on the minds of city leaders. He said he recently talked to two ODOT engineers and both made the same suggestion: Lawton needs “a strategy like ODOT has.”

Booker identified issues he said the ad hoc committee will focus on: critical bridges (bridges that need immediate repairs or replacement) will remain the priority, followed by street projects that already have been identified; creating a maintenance program similar to the one ODOT uses; discussing road improvements; and developing an eight-year streets plan.

“The $60 million in ad valorem is just part of the plan,” Booker said, adding city leaders already are looking at other avenues to improve the money available for streets, to include a decision to triple the amount of funding dedicated to streets materials in the new fiscal year budget.

Council members said a focused program is important.

“We have roads we have to replace,” said Ward 8 Councilman Randy Warren, adding some roads are “too far gone to repair. We need help to catch back up.”

Gill said not every street “needs to be torn up and put in new,” explaining the city must develop a maintenance program and set priorities for the work it will tackle. Gill also said the ad hoc committee will look at ODOT’s program and build a city policy around it while also establishing priorities for the streets work it wants done. And, he suggested the city needs to tackle what he calls the main problem contributing to deteriorating streets: water and drainage.

“This is a long-range mission,” he said, of what he predicts is an eight- to 10-year street program.

Ward 2 Councilman Kelly Harris compared Lawton’s efforts to the MAPS program Oklahoma City implemented to tackle its development issues.

“It takes vision, but it also takes money,” Harris said, adding if Lawton “wants nice things, we have to invest.”