Berkley selects new roads for improvements

BERKLEY — The Berkley City Council approved funding to continue its road rehabilitation project for multiple residential streets.

The council at its Jan. 8 meeting approved road improvements for three residential streets in Berkley for $96,285.37. The roads include Gardner Road from Oxford to 11 Mile roads, Griffith Avenue from 11 Mile to Cambridge roads, and West Boulevard from Mortenson to Cass boulevards.

The project comes from the city’s infrastructure millage that was passed in 2018, which generates approximately $1 million each year for infrastructure improvements.

Berkley Director of Public Works Shawn Young said the project work will include sections of the road’s asphalt being grinded off, with a thin layer put back; curb repairs and replacements; and driveway approaches.

“Originally this was a much more robust list (of roads),” he said. “I wanted to have a list of a bunch of streets and we knew for the next three, four years what we’re doing. … We did some research on how many lead services on each road, (and) a lot of those roads dropped off the list. It just didn’t make financial sense to put a new road down and then five years into it, have to tear it back up again to replace main and services. So these were ultimately picked because of records showing very low lead services.”

The project is expected to begin in the spring. Engineering design assistance in this process will be done by Hubbell, Roth and Clark.

Mayor Pro Tem Ross Gavin said the roads in Berkley have been improving and continue to be a work in progress.

“We’ve made good strides over the past few years, with bigger road projects kind of on Harvard, on Kenmore, on Cornwall, Wiltshire, you know, just among general slab improvements in various parts of the city as well,” he said. “In years past, we’ve looked to coordinate our road fixes where we’ve seen elevated water main breaks so we aren’t fixing a road and then needing to tear it up a few years later to just fix the water mains. So that’s kind of been what we’ve done in the years past here, since the passage of the millage, which the residents generously passed a few years back.”

“Infrastructure improvements are a key priority and I know for others on council as well, as … they’re foundational to what we do at the local government level, and kind of ensuring the infrastructure that residents totally expect but certainly deserve as well,” he continued.

Gavin reflected that often the situation in Michigan has been not having the money to make needed road improvements.

“With the millage passing in 2018, it kind of gave us, again, that dedicated funding source to be able to do some of these larger scale projects here in Berkley,” he said. “I think we’ve seen some clear improvement, but there’s always room to continue to make progress.”