PEA RIDGE — The city of Pea Ridge appeared to be in an economic boom six years ago with an upturn of housing development and growth in surrounding areas.

“New lands were being annexed into the city, subdivision regulations were being upgraded, new ordinances were being developed and the water and sewer capacities were being studied and up-graded,” said city engineer M.J. Hensley.

City officials studied each facet of the city’s infrastructure, including streets, water, sewer, police, fire, schools, parks and the library. For upgrades and repairs to each of these, city officials turned to the use of impact fees.

Impact fees by definition are fees charged to a new dwelling, which could be applied to each of the above infrastructures proportionally based on potential use.

Impact fees from each new homemust be used within seven years.

Sixteen local streets were considered impact streets, meaning the expanse in traffic was significant enough to warrant money for future maintenance.

In considering which streets to be selected for overlay, Hensley and the Pea Ridge Planning Commission considered two factors: the amount of traffic and the remaining life of the street in its current condition.

“A street in its normal life decay reaches a point that is ideal to rehab or, if not done at that time, within three to four more years it will cost 10 times more to bring the street up to the same standard. One can interpret this data as meaning the longer the maintenance is delayed, the less can be done with the same amount of funds,” Hensley said.

The city has been left with undeveloped lots, thanks to developers going out of business in a time of recession. Impact fees alone will not cover all expensesto repair every street in town.

“The building will come back after we bounce out of the current recession. It may be nice to have so many lots ready to build with new sewer lines, a new water tower and plenty of new water lines. This down time gives us an opportunity to correct some of the things that were moved to the back shelf in the boom,” Hensley said.

City officials accepted bids for the overlay of several city streets chosen for the project last week.

Those streets included North Davis Street, East Patton Street, Carr Street, McCulloch Street and West Harris Street. Work will soon begin to repair these streets.

Hensley said: “As the overlay program moves forward, we will be trying to correct several things relative to the good performance of the streets, such as drainage, pavement width and water runoff. Adequate signing around the construction zones will be helpful in avoiding the construction.”

News, Pages 1 on 06/09/2010