The City of Kenai voted to authorize the use of previously appropriated funds for the Wildwood Drive Rehabilitation Project. Corresponding documents indicate that there are $329,000 within the Municipal Roadway Improvements Fund for projects yet to be identified that were provided for during the Fiscal Years 19 and 20. Members of the general public, during the public comment period, and the City Council agreed that Wildwood Drive conditions continued to deteriorate, prompting the request to utilize the funds to improve the roadway.
Councilman Henry Knackstedt, “I’m going to say that the road prescriptively is not just the driving surface. The city maintains the ditch as well. Drainage. Part of a road structure is not only the surface as it is the ditch as well. I’m going to probably suggest and argue that there is a ditch there, it’s been filled for the last 40 years or 50 years with sand and other debris. If one were to dig where there ought to be a ditch, you’re going to find culverts buried there. That is part of what the city should be maintaining. Asphalt, if you don’t keep the water off of it, it will deteriorate very rapidly. I’d be concerned about spending $350,000, you know, on the project and having it deteriorate in a few years. I guess I don’t have so much of a question other than I think it’s important that there be drainage ditching restored to the project and that it not only be shoulder-to-shoulder, but prescriptively that it goes to the ditch. That is how the Borough looks at its roads, too, that the ditch is part of the road.”
By unanimously voting to approve Resolution No. 2021-26, the city will use the funds to acquire engineering services to provide construction documents with the intent of bidding in early summer with remaining funds used for construction. A Request for Proposals will be released this spring.
The project consists of 2,500 feet of roadway from the Kenai Spur Highway to near the entrance of the Wildwood correctional facility.