Overland Park mayoral candidates on the issues: chip seal - Shawnee Mission Post

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In early June, we asked our readers about the issues you wanted to hear the candidates running for Overland Park mayor address in the lead up to the Aug. 3 primary.

Based on your feedback, we developed a five-item questionnaire touching on the most important issues to the citizens of Overland Park.

Each day this week, we will publish the candidates’ responses to one of these five questions. Read the candidates’ responses to previously published questions about affordable housing, police transparency and climate change.

Below are the candidates’ responses item #4:

There have been a number of complaints about the city’s use of the chip seal technique for road repairs in recent months, but less discussion about alternatives and how much they would cost. Do you support the city’s current chip seal program? If not, what should the city be doing instead to repair and maintain its roads? How much would an alternative cost and how would the city pay for it? If you do support chip seal, how do you respond to residents who say it is both dangerous to pedestrians/cyclists and damaging to vehicles?

Here are the answers the Post received from the candidates:

Curt Skoog

For nearly two decades, Overland Park residents have said that the maintenance of city streets is one of their highest priorities. Due to this, the city budgets approximates $15 million per year on street maintenance. The successful results are clear to anyone driving through our city.

In an effort to review and improve current processes, I was proud to lead the City Council in creating the Infrastructure Advisory Group. This group of professionals and residents will review how the City of Overland Park builds and maintains its streets. Chip seal is included in this review. I look forward to their recommended changes and options for addressing any increase in cost.

Facts about Overland Park Street Maintenance.

• 2,044 lane miles of roadway to maintain
• 1,425 lane miles are residential, neighborhood and collector
• Chip Seal Expected Life Span: 7 to 9 years, at a cost of $20,000 per lane mile
• The alternative Thin Lift Mill and Overlay Life Span: 7 to 9 years, at a cost of $150,000 per lane mile
• Approximately 170 lane miles are chip sealed per year
• Changing entirely to Mill and Overlay would increase costs 7.7 times, or $22.7 million per year

No one, including myself, is a fan of chip seal. Just stopping chip seal and not maintaining our residential streets is not a responsible choice. Streets will quickly decay from the intrusion of water. I am optimistic that the Infrastructure Advisory Group’s recommendations will provide a path away from chip seal.

As Mayor, I will lead the City Council and community through a discussion on changes to how our community will maintain its streets into the future. As good stewards of public infrastructure and your tax dollars, I am confident we will come to a consensus on the correct solution for residential street maintenance in Overland Park.

Mike Czinege

I do not support the current use of chip seal.

Chip seal was intended for rural roads and not for urban or suburban use. We need to find an alternative resurfacing material and find the money in the budget to pay for it.

The Tax Foundation rated Kansas as the 8th highest state for state and local taxes. Property taxes have risen 320% since 1997 at 6 times the rate of inflation. The city council needs to challenge every line item in the budget to get spending in line with revenues by starting with essential services (like fire, police, and road maintenance) and building up from there by prioritizing discretionary items.

Faris Farassati, PhD, PharmD

Let’s look at some facts about chip seal:

1. For about 16 years, people of OP have demanded a change away from chip seal to almost ANYTHING else, even requesting not to have anything done to their streets. Over 5,000 residents represented by 24 HOAs recently asked us to “leave them alone”. In 2016, when people showed up in opposition to chip seal, they were not even included as an item on the agenda!
2. Chip seal is a rural grade technology described by Bicycling Magazine as a “body sized cheese grater” when you fall on it sized cheese grinder and the worst surface treatment that is hazardous to everyone but especially kids, cyclists, the elderly and pets. It also causes property damage. The aggregates from chip seal constantly wash away damaging sewer lines and therefore ecology. No other municipality in metro KC uses chip seal the the extent that OP does.
3. The obsolete policies of OP government in giving away hundreds of millions of tax dollars to private corporations has caused significant financial shortcomings resulting in a lack of funding for a better residential street treatment and other city services.
4. If we incorporated the same road-resurfacing technology as Leawood, the cost would be very reasonable. The $20 million cost you hear is nothing but a manufactured concept based on using the most expensive estimates. It’s also an excuse to probably raise property taxes in future.
5. Over 3 months ago, I sent the technical data about overlay technology that Leawood uses to the public works committee after speaking with Leawood’s engineers. We were promised a chance to present it that never happened. To this day the chair of the committee refuses to discuss this topic.\

I have always promoted the concept of evidence-based government, that’s a government that acts on the basis of research, data and logical thinking and listens to its constituents: none of the behavior of OP government about chip seal matches a logical and people-based position.

Clay Norkey

Chip seal has been one of the biggest complaints from residents of our city for the last 15 years, and unfortunately there are many people who feel that their local government has ignored them. That is a problem. Our local leaders should have been more proactive and engaged on this issue. While I am glad that a new task force is being established to examine our street-resurfacing options and interrelated infrastructure needs, this review should have been conducted years ago.

The central issue with replacing chip seal is the cost. According to the county, the current method is almost ten times less expensive per mile of road than alternatives used in some of the surrounding cities. Those cities have municipal property taxes that are twice Overland Park’s rates, or higher. Using that alternative would increase road maintenance costs roughly $20 million a year, and there are few options for coming up with that kind of money without a major tax increase for our residents. Contrary to some claims, there is no pot of money being given away to developers instead of being used on our roads. I do not think now is the right time to ask our residents to take on an additional tax burden of that magnitude for this, especially without strong public engagement.

But this issue must still be addressed. We should always be seeking out better, more cost-effective methods for everything that we do, and our roads are no exception. Overland Park should look to new, sustainable, and cost-effective technologies that are being utilized in some cities in Oregon and California to see if they can provide better long-term value here in Overland Park.

Finally, the city must do a better job of engaging with residents to make sure that people’s voices are being heard. We need to find better ways to get input from the public and establish a more collaborative process for addressing issues so that complaints do not go unaddressed until a big election year comes around. I am confident that, with the right leadership, we can find a way to fix this problem that will work for all of us long into the future.

On Friday, we will publish the candidates’ responses to the fifth and final question: 

The city’s use of tax incentives to attract businesses and spur new development have become the subject of extensive debate in recent years. What’s your general view on the use of tax incentives? Should they ever be used for greenfield projects? Are there any tax incentive tools you believe should never be used? Why or why not?

We’re coming to Blue Valley!

Southern Overland Park residents have been asking for their own community news source for years. And this fall, we’ll be delivering it. If you’d like info on the launch date for the new Blue Valley Post — as well as opportunities to share your feedback on what we should be covering in the Blue Valley area, sign up here.

Editor’s Note: Faris Farassati requested we begin using the title “Dr.” when referring to him. It is the Post’s practice to avoid using the title Dr. unless in reference to a medical doctor in a story about a health issue. However, we do typically include degree abbreviations for those who have attained a doctorate-level degree. In this case, we will include Farassati’s degree references in this and tomorrow’s candidate responses. 

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Overland Park mayoral candidates on the issues: chip seal - Shawnee Mission Post
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