Hillsdale’s Department of Public Services has finished its autumn road maintenance projects on streets in the city and near Hillsdale College.
Between Nov. 3 and Nov. 10, DPS crews and contractors repaired minor damage on Manning, River, Hillsdale, and West streets on both sides of Carleton Road to prevent conditions from worsening. They will also complete major renovations on State Street Thursday.
“It’s always cheaper to spend money to maintain streets than it is to let them go the point where they need to be reconstructed,” DPS Director Jake Hammel said. “We’re trying to turn over a new leaf here to at least maintain roads that are worth maintaining.”
On West and Manning, contractor crews filled minor cracks with liquid rubber to prevent more serious damage once winter arrives.
“The reason for crack fill is to keep water out of the cracks, because when water gets in, it freezes and expands,” Hammel said. “So you get the crack filled as early as possible before you hit wintertime, and our intentions are to do more of that.”
DPS crews also closed Hillsdale Street to repair a sunken seam in the road.
“It was a trip hazard for pedestrians crossing the street and definitely a major hazard for motorcycles,” Hammel said. “The reason we had no parking there was because we had hunks of asphalt flying while we were milling it out. It was safest for everybody just to close that down for two days.”
Since Hillsdale Street is a major parking spot for college students, finding campus parking was difficult during the repairs.
“It just demonstrated again that there isn’t enough on-campus parking for students,” senior Jacob Thackston said. “The lots were all full at the times that they were most needed.”
Senior Rachel Solomito agreed: “I’m glad the repairs were brief, but it did make me very late to work that morning because both Manning Street and the Grewcock Student Union parking lot were full. I ended up parking in a corner lot past Kendall Hall that I’m not sure was meant for students.”
With these projects completed, the Department of Public Services has finished all the projects it said it hoped to accomplish before winter breaks. Hammel said the sustained warm weather “has been a huge help.”
“It bought us a little more time to complete some stuff, for sure,” he said. “That one on Hillsdale Street, we definitely didn’t want that one to go another winter; it was getting too big.”
