Oakwood is about to embark on a $200,000 effort to pave short sections of several city roads.

The city is set to accept bids Thursday on the work, which involves milling, patching and overlaying, with a schedule to wrap up by Nov. 30.

Paving is slated for Pointers Court, Mundy Mill Drive from Mundy Mill Road to Oakwood Road, Shawnee Drive between McClure Drive and Covey Trail, and Candlestick Lane from Township Drive to the city limits.

Also, work is set for the heavily traveled areas of Plainview Road, from the Interstate 985 overpass to Atlanta Highway, and McEver Road, from Oakwood to Flat Creek roads.

“There’ll be traffic impact particularly on (Plainview and McEver), with traffic control and flaggers,” City Manager Stan Brown said.

The effort, funded by the city’s special purpose local option sales tax, is part of an annual program to keep up with city roads.

“We have an overall pavement management program where we have done an inventory of all of our streets,” Brown said.

The program features a rating system for city roads, with the aim of keeping “a level of good and very good conditions on 90 percent of our roads,” he said.

“It’s kind of like everything else. If you don’t put the emphasis on taking care of what you have, at some point (the roads) are going to get to a point of deterioration where it becomes too costly without having to reconstruct the roads,” Brown said.

The paving program is based on the “life cycle” of city roads, he added.
“It’s not something that every city does, but something we think is sort of a model program,” Brown said.

The city began its program in 2007 but skipped funding in 2009.

The 2010-15 paving program looks at paving work on 28 streets, including Old Flowery Branch Road, Railroad Street, Mundy Mill Drive and Chamblee Road.

A Georgia Department of Transportation project, the $6.7 million extension of Thurmon Tanner Parkway through Oakwood, will be going on as the road repavings are taking place.

That project calls for the final four-lane segment of Thurmon Tanner to be built between Mundy Mill and Plainview roads.

Completion is set for a Dec. 31. When it is completed, the entire parkway will run from Atlanta Highway near Interstate 985 in Oakwood to Phil Niekro Boulevard in Flowery Branch.