GAINESVILLE – Some commuters who frequent State Route 60 through Gainesville no longer notice them; others have learned, almost subconsciously, to navigate around them; while others grimace audibly as they thump across them.
Following Tuesday evening’s Gainesville City Council meeting a pair of city administrators was asked what the city plans to do about them.
“Them” are the multiple occurrences of uneven pavement surrounding manhole covers along SR 60, many an inch or more in depth.
And whether “them” has caused you simply to spill your coffee or require a full vehicle realignment you probably have noticed those 15-square-feet aprons and wondered, “Are they going to leave them this way?”
City Manager Bryan Lackey began by setting the record straight: the city did not pave the portions of SR 60 that pass through Gainesville. Whether your travels take you along the E.E. Butler Parkway, Green Street or Thompson Bridge Road segments of SR 60, Lackey says that paving job was done by the state; namely, the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Lackey said owners of the manholes are the ones responsible for finishing that final portion of the resurfacing job, and since the City of Gainesville does control several of the manholes he referred all questions regarding “them” to Linda MacGregor, Director of Gainesville’s Department of Water Resources.
“The manholes that are in Thompson Bridge Road, some of them are ours, the city water department’s manholes, and some of them are other utilities like AT&T,” MacGregor explained.
“And so both of us are in the process of raising those manholes up to be even with the new pavement,” MacGregor said. “That work is ongoing.”
“Most of ours are completed,” she quickly added.
When asked if her department knew AT&T’s plans for working on the manholes they control MacGregor said, “We do a lot of inter-utility coordination, but I don’t know their schedule.”
MacGregor said the city hopes to have the remaining manholes under their control completed soon but agreed that winter weather has a way of delaying such projects from being completed as quickly as they would like.
