As the construction season picks up, the Jefferson Public Works Department will continue to provide street maintenance as its largest impact this year.

Public Works Director Dave Morlan says city crews are continuing to do concrete patching throughout the summer. He points out that they have quite a list of areas where the portions of the streets have either been broken up or sunken in. He explains the process of how they replace a portion of the street.

“(They) Identify the patches that they are going to do. They go out, mark them out, saw them, (then) come back, break them out, take out sub-base. They have to drill and dowel the streets, put the sub-base back in, and then pour the concrete and finish it.”

Morlan says another summer-long project is crack sealing streets, which they hire a contractor to do. 

“And what they’ll do is either saw or router all the cracks, they’ll blow them out, and then they put tar in the cracks to seal them up so the moisture can’t get into the sub-base, and freeze/thaw and break the streets up.”    

Morlan adds that a local contractor has also been hired to remove the tree stumps and replace with grass seed from the after effects of last August’s derecho storm.