Engineers establish city’s infrastructure condition

Historic City News readers will be glad to learn that the City of St Augustine has made a scientific, baseline assessment of the condition of the city’s road, water, sewer and stormwater systems — even though they won’t be glad to hear the grades.

Mayor Nancy Shaver told Historic City News that in walking local neighborhoods during her campaign for election, the residents and business owners sent her a clear and recurring message that they were fed up with City Hall’s practice of “deferred maintenance” of essential services — redirecting that money, instead, to pay for four-years of parties and junkets to Spain for politicians and city employees.

At their regular meeting tomorrow night, the St. Augustine City Commission will receive a report and presentation of a recently completed comprehensive assessment of the city’s infrastructure.

The Engineering Division of the city’s Public Works Department, with assistance from Applied Technology Management, using an evaluation methodology adopted by the American Society of Civil Engineers to evaluate and grade public infrastructure.

Mayor Shaver has been calling for fact-based planning for public projects even before she took office in November. “You can’t know how to move forward until you know, accurately, where you stand today,” Shaver told Historic City News editor Michael Gold.

The assessment will show that, although the city’s stormwater and roads were graded “D+”, the city’s overall asset condition grade is “C”. Applied Technology Management says that means the city’s infrastructure is “mediocre — needs attention.”

As a comparison, the city’s grade equals that of the State of Florida, which also received a “C” but surpasses the condition of the nation’s infrastructure which rates a “D+”.

“The value of the assessment is that it encompasses a body of information that lays the ground work for prioritizing needs and identifying funding shortfalls for capital improvements and annual maintenance and rehabilitation,” said Director of Public Works, Martha Graham.

If you plan to attend, the regular meeting of the St Augustine City Commission will be held Monday night, February 23, 2015, beginning at 5:00 p.m. in the Alcazar Room of City Hall located at 75 King Street in St Augustine.  You can watch the meeting live on Comcast Government Television channel 3. Meetings of the City Commission are available for live and on-demand viewing at COSATV.com.