Traffic merges from four to two lanes in a construction zone near the intersection of Kasold Drive and Bob Billings Parkway, Thursday, July 7, 2016.

When crews get to work repairing Lawrence roadways this year, funding levels for the city’s street maintenance program will mean some ailing residential streets could be left unattended.

Public Works Director Chuck Soules said that’s partly because big reconstruction projects on several of the city’s main roadways and intersections are calling for millions of dollars in funding.

“We’re tackling some of the bigger maintenance projects, but when you look at some of the residential streets, there’s a lot of work that needs (to be) done,” Soules said. “I think the curbs and gutters are getting to a point that we need to start addressing them a little more.”

The amount of money budgeted for contracted street maintenance — work such as such as crack sealing, patching, repaving, and curb and gutter repair — has been on the decline in recent years. In addition, street maintenance includes improvements to infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians. Those improvements for this year total $30,000, and include the addition of bicycle pavement markings and bike route signs, according the city’s street maintenance plan.

The past two years, approximately $3 million has been budgeted for street maintenance, which is half of what the street maintenance program was expected to receive annually when it was created in 2005. Soules said the $6 million figure is “thrown around a lot,” but that that number shouldn’t be considered in isolation.

“Our staff looks at it as maintenance and reconstruction, but from a community perspective, I think you’re looking at how much total we put into infrastructure,” Soules said.

For instance, the street maintenance numbers don’t include street reconstructions, such as the approximately $5.4 million reconstruction of a portion of Kasold Drive planned for this year.

Nevertheless, the funding level for street maintenance the past several years isn’t likely to be what voters expected when they approved the 0.3 percent infrastructure sales tax in 2008. At that time, voters were told the infrastructure sales tax funds would “enhance rather than supplant” funding for infrastructure projects.

In 2008, before the infrastructure sales tax was in effect, the street maintenance program was allocated $4.8 million. Funding levels subsequently increased — $5.7 million was allocated in 2012 — but have since dropped off. This year, $2.9 million is budgeted for street maintenance, which is a slight increase over the $2.8 million budgeted last year.

Commissioner Mike Amyx said he thinks the tax is living up to the expectations of voters, and that the new dollars have “in no way replaced the program as it was before.” He pointed to the city’s Pavement Condition Index, a routine survey of the condition of the city’s streets, in which the vast majority of the city’s pavement is currently rated 70 or above on a scale of 1-100.

“I think those numbers are showing that we’re doing a lot better job today than we have been in the past,” Amyx said.

Like Soules, Amyx pointed to the fact that street maintenance projects don’t include the millions of dollars that the city spends on street reconstruction projects.

“When we stop and consider the amount of money and the amount of work that’s been done over the last several years, it’s an incredible amount of money,” Amyx said.

For this year, those projects include several multimillion-dollar projects, such as the reconstruction of a portion of Kasold Drive, the intersection of 19th Street and Naismith Drive and the roundabout at the intersection of Harvard Road and Wakarusa Drive.

Still, Amyx said that there is only so much money and only so many projects that can be done each year. He said he thinks the city is doing well at balancing larger reconstruction projects on main streets and maintenance on residential streets. Using the Kasold Drive reconstruction as an example, he said there are other factors to consider as well.

“There’s probably a lot that we can do (in residential areas), but when you consider the amount of traffic that that one street is carrying, it’s obviously something that’s been put off for a while and needs to be done,” Amyx said. “Here again, it’s that balance between maintenance being done on a regular basis and things that have to wait for a bit because we’re rebuilding, using a lot of dollars on one particular street.”

Nevertheless, there was a slight decrease in the pavement condition in the past two index cycles, in which the index dropped from 75.54 to its current overall rating of 73.73, according the city’s street maintenance plan. The plan states the impact of the street maintenance program is “leveling out.”

Not available for 2017 is $200,000 in funding that was expected as part of a state matching program for mill and overlay on state designated roadways within the city limits. The Kansas Department of Transportation did not fund the program for 2017, according the maintenance plan.

Street maintenance projects will occur in several sections of town this year, including brick patching on Rhode Island Street, mill and overlay on Monterey Way and crack seal on Sixth Street.

Soules said the first street maintenance projects will begin in early spring, with the majority of them beginning right after the University of Kansas’ commencement on May 14. He said the city will provide notifications when specific projects are set to begin, and he urged motorists to pay attention and slow down around construction zones.

“Especially during the spring and summer, people just need to be aware that construction happens on some of these roads and it may take them a couple extra minutes to get through that area,” Soules said.

A map of the street maintenance and reconstruction projects that will be done this year is available on the city’s website.