Ferndale council approves 20 miles of road and parking lot work

FERNDALE — The Ferndale City Council approved a contract for pavement work on many of the city’s roads.

At its May 28 meeting, the council approved a contract for its 2024 pavement joint and crack sealing program to Wolverine Sealcoating in the amount of $66,547.

The roadwork will see the crack sealing of 20 miles of roads and six municipal parking lots. Ferndale, outside of Eight Mile Road and Woodward Avenue, has jurisdiction over 75 miles of roads.

“These roads are mostly the roads that we paved two and three years ago,” Department of Public Works Director James Jameson said. “So within three years of a road’s construction, we will typically … go back and crack seal it to make sure that we protect it at the start of its useful life.”

Jameson confirmed the streets that will be crack sealed this year previously were paved in 2021 and 2022.

“Our paving was like a 10-year program,” he said. “We’re in the ninth year of that. Next year will be the 10th year. So if we’re crack sealing ’21 and ’22 this year, two years from now, 2026, we’ll be crack sealing what was paved this year.”

“After that, we’ll be outside of our regular paving program,” he continued. “We’ll have like a five-year, seven maybe-ish year interim period where … every other year, we will crack seal, like, one-third of city roadways based on the age. So if roads get crack sealed after three years initially, they’ll get crack sealed again after six years, ideally, and then they’ll get crack sealed again on the ninth year.

Council member Donnie Johnson understands the frustrations that come with constant road construction, but as both a Ferndale and Michigan resident, Johnson said this is a perennial thing that they have to get through together.

“I’m proud of the work that Ferndale is doing,” he said. “We’re continuing to invest in our roads. I think we’ve seen great improvements and we’re committed to continuing those investments for the foreseeable future.”

Jameson said the roads are in good shape and that what the city will be doing is more preventative maintenance.

“This is us being proactive,” he said. “If we left these cracks, over time they would get bigger and then they would turn into potholes. So if you seal them every two to three years as new cracks, just wear and tear on the roadways, weather kind of opens up some of these cracks. The more water and ice you can keep out of those cracks throughout the year, the better. So this crack seal just goes in. It fills those gaps. It doesn’t allow water infiltration and, most importantly, it doesn’t allow that water to turn into ice and expand and contract under or, like, inside those cracks.”

The city stated the road work will be done all this year.