Council directs focus to projects
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on February 26, 2016 1:46 PM
The Goldsboro City Council wrapped up its annual retreat on Thursday by firming up priorities and projects they will focus on during the coming year.
Areas the council will focus on for the coming year include community safety, community appearance, maintaining infrastructure, improving the quality of life in Goldsboro, and working to resurface existing streets and pave dirt roads.
This list is a shakeup from the list of priorities produced at the 2015 council retreat where greenways, Parks and Recreation and downtown investment were listed as high priorities. While those three areas will still receive attention from the council, they are not high-priority items coming out of this year's council retreat.
On a list of 15 items, the council was asked to rank general objectives by importance on a scale of one to 15 -- one being the highest priority and 15 being the lowest priority. No items received a rating of 15, and several items were tied by council rankings. The full list of items ranked by importance per the council is as follows:
* Street resurfacing - 1
* Increased police support - 2
* Community appearance and cleanup - 3
* Community relationship building - 4
* Dirt street construction - 5
* Economic development support - 5
* Greenways and multi-use paths - 6
* Equipment and vehicle replacement - 7
* Sidewalk construction - 7
* Additional employee benefits - 8
* Customer service focus - 8
* Downtown appearance and cleanup - 9
* Parks and Recreation facility upgrades - 10
* Additional community centers and gym space - 11
* Bike lanes - 12
Additionally, there were several major projects the council decided to focus on during the coming year, such as securing ShotSpotter technology for the city, which automatically locates gunshots fired in the city; allocating more money in the city budget toward housing demolition for houses in disrepair in the city; looking at allocating money to rehabilitate Union Station to an extent, but not fully, so that it is in line with the North Carolina Department of Transportation's memorandum of understanding with the city for what condition the historical building should be kept in; making a major effort to resurface streets in disrepair and pave existing dirt roads; and possibly applying for the newest TIGER grant from the federal government to complete the downtown renovation process.
The council finished the day by detailing what can be done about streets in disrepair throughout the city.
City Engineer Marty Anderson said every street in every district had been driven down and rated by his staff over the past two months leading up to the retreat, which enabled him to give the council a street resurfacing priority list for what roads need to be resurfaced during 2016.
Each street was assigned a pavement condition rating based on how many cracks there were in the road, the age of the pavement, any ruts in the road from continuous travel, how many portions of a road were torn up by tree roots and more.
"The pavement condition rating is a range of zero to 100, zero being the worst condition and 100 being the best," Anderson said. "A good pavement condition is considered 80 or greater."
Anderson told the council that Seymour Drive, Claiborne Street, Devereaux Street, Wayne Avenue, Peachtree Street, Herman Street, Seaboard Street, Neil Street, Cross Street, Tampa Street, Daniel Drive, Cedar Road and Bayleaf Drive all had sections that needed to be resurfaced.
Anderson also provided a map to the council showing where there were still city owned dirt roads that needed to be paved throughout the city limits. On that map, there were more than 50 streets that were city owned that remain unpaved. Those streets are mostly concentrated in the areas west of East Ash Street and in North End neighborhoods.
District 3 council member Mark Stevens did not attend either day of the City Council's retreat.