OIL, ROCK PRICES HINDER PAVING COST OF REPAIRING STREETS CLIMBING.

Byline: KERRY CAVANAUGH Staff Writer

Although Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's budget proposal includes a 34 percent hike for street paving, record-high prices for oil and rock - the key components of asphalt - means the city will be able to fix only as many streets as were repaired this year.

Over the past year, the cost to repave one mile of severely damaged street jumped from $400,000 to $600,000, officials said.

Oil, which binds the asphalt, now costs more than $70 a barrel compared with $60 a barrel this time last year. And the price of crushed rock or aggregate jumped 50 percent over two months last summer.

"The price of all our raw materials is going off the scale," said Bill Robertson, director of the city's Bureau of Street Services.

"The reality is as we went through the budget hearings, I was prepared to see my programs cut big-time. I was extremely pleased that the mayor held the line."

Villaraigosa's budget allocates $80 million for street repairs, compared with $60 million last year. But that will pay to fix 500 miles of street - the same as this year - barely a dent in the 4,000-mile backlog.

"We had really hoped to increase the budget to have more streets paved. But because of the increase in the cost of materials, we consider it a victory that we were able to maintain the current level of service," said Karen Sisson, Villaraigosa's deputy mayor, who helped crunch most of the numbers in the budget.

About $72 million will go to reconstructing 200 miles of severely damaged streets, and $7.4 million will pay for a slurry seal on 300 miles of streets to extend the life of aging asphalt.

Los Angeles leaders have warned that the city is facing a street-repair crisis, with some neighborhood lanes looking like roads in Third World countries and an estimated 60 percent of the city's street in poor conditions.

Last week, San Fernando Valley Councilmen Greig Smith and Tony Cardenas proposed putting a $1.5 billion bond measure on the November ballot. They proposed fixing 4,000 miles of streets within eight years, rather than 80 years under the current repair schedule.

Cardenas said their proposal takes into account the high cost of materials.

"We could have said $1 billion or $900 million, but we chose to be honest that it might be $1.5 billion because of the cost of materials, and we need to be ready for that magnitude."

Nevertheless, he said, the fact that a $20 million boost in the street-paving budget won't help the backlog shows that a bond is the best way to solve the problem.

"We are still going to need to address infrastructure and that's a bond issue."

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who heads the council's transportation committee, said while she was happy to see street-paving funding increased, she's convinced there's more money in the budget for road repairs.

"We'll go line by line through the budget. My major priority as we look through is can we find additional money for streets and sidewalks."

The Bureau of Street Services saw the cost of road materials rise sharply last year, starting with rising oil prices. Then Hurricane Katrina reconstruction put a premium on building materials, so the price rose for wood and steel, which are used in road and sidewalk projects.

The big hit was the cost of aggregate, which increased by 50 percent in two months last year and is expected to go up again this year, Robertson said.

With less gravel mining in the L.A. Basin, the city has to haul crushed rock from the Antelope Valley and San Bernardino. With oil prices on the rise, the cost of trucking that material has gone up a lot.

Robertson and Sisson with the Mayor's Office are hoping to retrofit an asphalt plant to be able to recycle asphalt torn up in street repairs.

The city now recycles about 20 percent of the aggregate it tears up. Robertson hopes to increase that to 80 percent with asphalt-plant upgrades.

"By just recycling current roadways, we have 65 years worth of aggregate under city streets. It would reduce our cost tremendously because we wouldn't be held hostage to aggregate transportation cost."

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Public Works employee Victor Lambert fills a pothole along Cahuenga Boulevard on Wednesday morning. The recent storm caused many potholes in the area.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer