July 12, 2022

Workers for the Poplar Bluff Street Department are currently getting the opportunity to complete some routine maintenance around town due to supply chain delays. “Parts, in general, are just difficult to come by,” said Jerry Lawson, head of the street department for the city of Poplar Bluff...

Workers for the Poplar Bluff Street Department are currently getting the opportunity to complete some routine maintenance around town due to supply chain delays.

“Parts, in general, are just difficult to come by,” said Jerry Lawson, head of the street department for the city of Poplar Bluff.

Currently, maintenance workers have been focusing on lawn care and the re-striping of sidewalks and turn lanes due to the delay of the needed parts.

“Our street sweeper has been down for three weeks. This is the first day that it’s been up and running in three weeks due to waiting for a new drive shaft,” said Lawson Thursday.

“Some of the smaller stuff that didn’t get as much attention before is getting attention now, so it’s a good and bad thing. It’s good that we’re catching up on some stuff, but I do wish we could be getting more done,” said Lawson.

Another example Lawson mentioned was the need for a new concrete saw blade.

“We have a concrete saw that we use, we run a 24 or 30-inch blade on it and we went to the supplier yesterday and we were just going to order three and he said ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, I can get you one,’” said Lawson. “Because that’s all their supplier has for the blade we use. We can cut about 300 feet of concrete with it and it’s done, it’s worn out, so we have got to really prioritize.”

The job of prioritizing will not be too much of a challenge as the city has no shortage of necessary projects to complete.

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Lawson jokingly stated, “We definitely have all we can say grace over.”

“We do have plans to overlay a couple of streets that really need it,” said Lawson.

He said at the moment, he could not give a timeline for those repairs due to the need for parts.

“We do have an asphalt grant that we will do the work on soon, we are just waiting for the engineers to finish, crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s,” said Lawson.

With the nearly half a million-dollar grant, the street department for intends to overlay some areas that require asphalt repair.

“Zehm Avenue will be overlaid this year, for sure. And we have a couple of the streets that we’re going to wait and see,” said Lawson.

“We will be blacktopping Bradley from Grand to Abington and then Abington from Bradley over to Alice, that’s the first phase and if we have any money left over, we have a couple of other locations but I don’t want to get someone’s hopes up.”

The determining factor on which projects can be completed will be the price of asphalt, which according to Lawson has gone up, “from $47 a ton last year to $62 a ton this year.”

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