Staff with the City of Sequim recently announced plans to improve a portion of Fir Street.

David Garlington, Sequim’s public works director, told Sequim city councilors on June 27 the city will seek bids in the next month to overlay Fir Street from Fifth Avenue to Ninth Avenue.

Included in the project is an overlay of a cul de sac on Klahn Place and reconstructing a portion of North Seventh Avenue by West Alder Loop that was damaged by a water main breaking in April.

Garlington said improving Fir Street is part of the city’s long-term plan to make it an east-west connection route and to eventually connect Ninth Avenue from the roundabout on Washington Street to Hendrickson Road.

Fir Street in front of the Sequim School District’s property is not a part of this project, but Garlington said city staff view that area as a corridor project which will be “received well by people who control (grant) money.”

The city budgeted $473,000 for the proposed Fir Street projects as part of its pavement rehabilitation program. However, Garlington said to maintain the city’s pavement condition index of 70, based on a study of roads’ cracking, depressions, utility trenches and more, will become more costly in the coming years.

“We’ve gotten to the point in the city that it’s a complicated puzzle to find the roads that we most want to pave that we don’t need to do utility work on as well,” Garlington said. “We’ve kind of taken the easy ones the last few years.”

By maintaining current expenses at around $500,000 a year, Garlington said the city’s roads will go gradually down to about 62 by 2021. He said to maintain a pavement condition of 70 citywide, the city must spend much more annually going from $1.1 million in 2017 to more than $2.1 million in 2021.

The pavement rehabilitation budget tentatively won’t be used entirely this year on the Fir Street project so city staff are compiling a pedestrian improvement project proposal for filling in sidewalk gaps and improving curbs to become ADA compliant on Blake Avenue and Brown Road.

Garlington said city staff plan to be proactive with installing new ADA compliant improving curbs and driveway entrances, which are included in the Fir Street project. He said city staff will present an ADA upgrade program at a later date.

Typically, pavement rehabilitation projects are presented sooner in the year for drier and sunnier conditions but Garlington said these projects are coming to bid later in the year because the in-progress parking lot project in the Water Reuse Demonstration Site took more staff time aiming for completion before August’s Dungeness Cup.

The city maintains 56 miles of roads and unspecified amount of alleyways that don’t factor into the pavement condition index.