City Council
259 N. Wilma Avenue
Ripon, CA 95366
MEMO
To: Honorable City Council
From: Kevin Werner, City Administrator
Date: 05/13/2025
Subject: Ripona Resurface Project
RECOMMENDED ACTION:
Award the contract for the Ripona Resurface Project to DSS Company, dba Knife River Construction in the amount of $1,521,980 and authorize staff to proceed (funding sources:
$1,257,540 allocated to the Streets and Roads Fund and $264,440 allocated to the Streets and Roads Reconstruction Fund).
BACKGROUND:
The City of Ripon receives dedicated revenue from State and Federal sources to fund the City’s streets and roads maintenance program, including crack patching, signage, striping, pothole repairs, overlays, resurfacing, reconstruction, and landscape maintenance.
The City of Ripon, like many other cities throughout California, is facing a challenge maintaining streets and roads due to inadequate funding. Prior to the passing of the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (Senate Bill 1), the gas tax rates approved in the mid-1990s has not been indexed to keep up with increasing cost of streets and roads capital repairs, which has resulted in a funding shortfall. Because of this, Ripon like most California cities, focused the limited revenue on preventing asphalt from failing and requiring expensive reconstruction of the street section.
Unfortunately, this approach did not address the worst roads in Ripon that require expensive reconstruction of the street section. The City Council has established the following policies to begin to identify funding needed to address the cost of reconstruction:
In 2015, the City Council established a policy to transfer 33 percent of any General Fund surplus to a Street and Road Reserve Fund to fund the reconstruction of roads that have failed.
In 2021, the City Council established a policy to transfer 50 percent of the Street & Road fund annual surplus to a Streets and Roads Reconstruction Fund. The annual surplus is the difference between the operating revenue received from state and local sources dedicated for streets and roads maintenance and the expense of City staff to perform all in-house maintenance activities, such as pot hole repair, crack sealing, sign replacement, and landscape maintenance.
As part of the 2024-25 Strategic Planning meeting, the City Council directed staff to prepare a capital maintenance plan to maximize the use of the limited revenue received from State and Federal sources, as well as the local funds being set aside as previously described. This plan divides the city into 8 areas that are made up of roughly the same miles of roadways. The goal is to obtain a contractor to complete the necessary capital improvements (e.g., slurry, overlay, or reconstruction) based on the condition of the road, every 2-4 years. The figure below shows the limits for these planned capital project areas.
Figure 1 - Street and Road Capital Project Summary
In Fiscal Year 2024-25, the City completed the design and construction for Project Area #1.
This included 7.7 miles of roads that received a chip/slurry seal resurfacing at a cost of $2.05 million and 450 feet of roads that were reconstructed at a cost of $350,000.
For Fiscal Year 2025-26, the City is planning to move forward with Project Area #2 since additional funds were available for this project because of grants received to offset the cost of previous year’s capital projects. This project includes 8 miles of roads that are planned to receive a chip/slurry seal resurfacing and 400 feet of roads that require reconstruction.
DISCUSSION
On May 1, 2025 bids for Project Area #2 (termed the Ripona Resurface Project) were opened; 6 bids were received as summarized below:
DSS Company dba Knife River Construction $1,521,980
Dirt Dynasty, Inc. $1,530,360
American Pavement Systems, Inc. $1,544,560
Consolidated Engineering, Inc. $1,558,744
VSS International, Inc. $1,575,211
United Pavement Maintenance, Inc. $1,661,596
City staff has reviewed the bids and found DSS Company dba Knife River Construction to be the lowest responsive bidder. The Contractor has submitted the bid bond and all required documents.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The total cost of $1,521,980 for construction of the Ripona Resurface Project will be funded through the Streets and Roads Fund ($1,257,540) and the Streets and Roads Reconstruction Fund ($264,440), which have a balance of $4.5 million and $1.5 million, respectively.