The $outh Third $treet Fia$co (Part 2)

Hudson DPW in the process of road reconstruction of
 a street repaved less than 5 years prior by Colarusso

Following up on my February 23rd post about the pavement situation -- past, present and future -- of S. 3rd Street, I will try to keep this post briefer.  It won't be easy - there is a 5-plus-year history, unhelpful and contradictory explanations from DPW, and lots of details to keep straight.  The lowdown is that if the situation had been handled properly from the beginning by Robert Perry, we would not be in the situation we presently find ourselves in.

If you were to walk the sidewalk along the western side of S. 3rd Street from Allen to Warren, a distance of approximately 600 feet, occasionally stopping and looking at the southbound lane of the street, you would never guess that the entire street had been repaved by a professional road paver just over 5 years ago, in the fall of 2017.  But it was.  (The northbound lane has no shortage of issues, either, but the southbound lane is particularly awful.)  The new pavement began showing signs of failure MONTHS after the work was completed in 2017.

For those of you who can't or don't want to have a look, I will guide you along -- from Allen Street to Warren, portion by portion -- what can be found in the southbound lane (with some comments about the northbound lane).  All distances were measured:

For the first 120 feet you will see the cleanest part of the street -- 120 feet of total road reconstruction done by DPW last year (the result of the work being shown in picture above.  Both lanes were eventually reconstructed).  

The 20-foot portion in the intersection with Partition is decent, though the northbound lane had to be excavated last year due to a sinkhole near two manhole covers.

North of Partition for 40 feet is a wide patched section done by DPW early last year or the year before to cover up a failed portion of the street.  Chances are good that this patch will not hold for much longer and that DPW only patched it temporarily, with the plan of replacing the failed area below at some point.  

Then 30 feet of cracked road.

Then 18 feet of another wide patch covering up another failed portion of the street.

Then 50 feet of what can only be described as crumbling and sinking asphalt -- well beyond just cracks.  These are the same conditions that caused DPW to begin reconstructing two portions of the 5-year-old street last year.  These were the symptoms which indicated to DPW, and anyone else looking at or driving on S. 3rd Street, that there was something seriously amiss with the work Colarusso had done in 2017.

Then the 20 feet of the Union Street intersection -- in horrible condition, full of cracks and patches.  It's possible that this intersection was not repaved along with the rest of S. 3rd in 2017.

Then 25 feet of what I would describe as "decent."

That is not a median line,
it is a long, long crack 
in a 5-year-old street surface

Then 35 feet of really badly cracked surface.

Then 70 feet to the Cherry Alley intersection with no shortage of cracked surface. 

Then 50 feet in decent condition.

Then 30 feet of crumbling and sinking asphalt, same as described above, and as seen here.  This failed section of the street is immediately adjacent to 30 feet of mostly clean pavement in both lanes.  This is the second of two section of S. 3rd Street reconstructed by DPW last year, same as the reconstructed section by Allen Street.  Perry described the reconstruction as having to "dig two feet down."

Then 40 feet to Warren Street in decent condition, ending S. 3rd Street.

Every two years, the State DOT offers municipalities funds to repair old and worn-out streets through its CHIPs program (Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program).  DOT offers municipalities two options that they will cover:  repave a road by replacing the few inches of asphalt, or do a full road reconstruction, which is done when the subbase (the foundation of a street, essentially) needs replacing.  Hudson hires Colarusso every two years to repave our streets and they do anywhere from $200,000 -$300,000 of street repaving on a few portions of various streets chosen DPW, all paid for by CHIPs.  I am almost certain that Colarusso has never done a street reconstruction for Hudson, but I could be wrong.  At least they haven't done one recently.  

Early last year at two Council meetings, Robert Perry claimed that when Colarusso ripped out the old pavement of South 3rd street in "2015 or 2017," (it was 2017) "we noticed some issues with the subbase."  Long story short, both lanes of the entire 600 feet of the street should have been RECONSTRUCTED right then and there by Colarusso. Rather, DPW Superintendent Robert Perry, who had likely never faced a similar situation, and certainly didn't plan for it, decided that there was no option but to just repave the street and hope for the best.  Or, in his own words, and which you can read in the Feb. 23 post, "It was not planned to be a road reconstruction project.... So we went heavy on the binder.  Obviously it didn't hold."   

Our DPW Superintendent, and the professional street paver he hired, both saw an issue with the subbase of South 3rd Street, and they ignored it.  They continued on as if it were not an issue worthy of attending to properly.  At least this is the story that Robert Perry twice told the council and the public 4 years after the street was repaved and had been failing badly and obviously for years.  Perry never warned anyone, at least publicly, that South 3rd street had a "subbase with issues," or that the street might fail.  For 4 and a half years he kept it to himself until the street was too ugly to ignore any longer and he was asked to explain what was going on by alder Theo Anthony at a Council meeting.  Perry sounded annoyed with the question, the first words out of his mouth being:  "Okay, here's the story..." 

One has to wonder if any other streets repaved in 2017 had faulty subbases which were ignored by our DPW Superintendent and Colarusso and not disclosed to anyone.  What about in 2019?  How about 2021?  What about this coming fall when Colarusso will, once again, be repaving some of our streets through the CHIPs program?  Will they once again be told by DPW/Robert Perry to pave over any obvious faulty street foundations and hope for the best, perhaps going "heavy on the binder" as a solution?

Coming soon to S. 3rd, yet again!

Sometime soon this year, DPW will once again have to RECONSTRUCT two more failed sections of South 3rd Street, both located in the southbound lane, between Warren and Union.  If you see Robert Perry at the work site, ask him how much this year's road reconstruction project is costing city taxpayers (and how much last year's work cost us), as well as how many of his men are being used for the work and how long it will take.  And how long he expects the DPW's reconstruction work to hold up.  And if he has time for more questions:  How much in materials has the City of Hudson DPW purchased from Colarusso to reconstruct portions of the road which Colarusso repaved over 5 years ago with their own material?  How many more years will it take for DPW to reconstruct the entirety of South 3rd Street? 

What I never heard Robert Perry say once during his two public explanations about S. 3rd Street was this: "I screwed up and it will never happen again.  Next time DPW or our paving contractor identifies issues below a street, such as a bad street subbase, work will halt, and we will prepare for our paving contractor to do a full reconstruction of the street, no matter what street it is, including along the truck route.  We can't just repave and hope for the best - that wasn't the right thing to do then, and it is not good enough going forward. I take full responsibility for this expensive and time-consuming mistake that was made in 2017, and you must know that I have learned a big lesson from my mistake."  

So, without any words to that effect from Mr. Perry, there appears to still be no process in place to properly and immediately handle a street found to have a "subbase with issues."  I guess we can expect another expensive, time-consuming fiasco from DPW to reoccur.  It's not a matter of if, but when.

My instinct tells me that, contrary to Mr. Perry's explanations, there was no bad subbase below 3rd Street at all. Something does not smell right.  I could be wrong, of course, but Colarusso probably just put down faulty asphalt or didn't prepare the street well enough.  If the subbase were so bad, why was South 3rd Street not failing, crumbling, and sinking in 2017 (which it wasn't)?  

                     Stay tuned for Part 3, coming soon (I hope)