Norris plans street assessment to guide repairs
An assessment of the condition of nearly 14 miles of Norris city streets will be performed by the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization at a cost of just $2,920 to the city under an agreement approved by the City Council last week.
The so-called “Roadway Pavement Condition Analysis” is similar to one just recently completed by the same organization for the city of Clinton, which has resulted in a plan by that city to undergo a comprehensive repaving project.
Norris city officials learned of the Knoxville Regional TPO’s road-assessment program recently, after Clinton’s plan was announced in the media.
The suggestion that Norris find a way to get its street conditions assessed came from a public workshop on roads held just prior to the March 9 City Council meeting by Councilman Bill Grieve.
The Knoxville Regional TPO, founded in 1977, “is federally mandated to provide comprehensive transportation planning in the TPO Planning Area,” according to its website.
Originally including just the city of Knoxville and a surrounding part of Knox County, the TPO planning area has been expanded over the years
It now includes all of Knox County and the contiguous urban areas of Anderson, Blount, Loudon, Roane and Sevier counties.
Grieve, who set up the workshop and led the discussion, said in his opening remarks that the city had “gotten behind” on street repairs, and has a lot of catching up to do.
He proposed raising property taxes to help pay for streets.
The only outside money Norris gets for road maintenance comes from an annual payment of about $55,000 from the state’s gas taxes, he said.
“We have to accumulate three to four years of that to do a [road] project,” he said.
Grieve noted that the recent resurfacing of a short section of East Norris Road close to downtown cost the city $175,000, and to finish the work all the way to the traffic light at Andersonville Highway would cost an additional $275,000 – which the city does not have in its budget.
The city’s most-recent property-tax collection brought in a total of $774,000, which went into the city’s general fund for regular operations.
Grieve proposed raising the city’s current tax rate – about 88.5 cents per $100 of property valuation – by 7.1%, or to about 94.8 cents per $100, which he said would generate about $55,000 more annually.
That extra money would go into a dedicated fund for roads, he said.
Councilwoman Loretta Painter said that she would first like to see the city hire an engineering firm to assess the current road conditions and prepare a plan for improvements.
“We need to bring an engineer in to see what we need to do, what needs to be addressed first,” she told the assembly. “We need an expert to come in and give us options.”
The decision to seek the agreement for such an assessment from the Knoxville Regional TPO came as a result of Painter’s request.
In other action during last week’s council meeting (April 13):
• City Manager Bailey Whited told the council that a survey of the city’s current sidewalks showed that 4.3 miles of the city’s approximately 14 miles of paved streets have no sidewalks.
• The council approved a contract totaling $33,200 for emergency dispatch services for the Norris police and fire departments to be handled by Anderson County over the next fiscal year, beginning July 1.
