Yorkville prepares for $4.6 million in roadway repair projects

With traffic flow increasing throughout Yorkville, and expanding subdivisions branching out the roadway system, the city’s streets are taking a pounding. To improve the arterial roadways that are under duress, city officials are getting strategic.

The city is continuing its significant infrastructure investment, which lagged for several years after the Great Recession dampened the city’s coffers, in the form of the Road to Better Roads Program, the Local Road Program, and a strategic multi-year Pavement Management Plan.

The city’s public works department is recommending a $3,337,338 contract with Builders Paving, LLC, of Hillside, to complete work scheduled for the 2025 Local Road Program. The work includes repairing and resurfacing several subdivision roadways across the city. Workers are also tasked with repairing city sidewalks.

2025 is year two of a four-year program to complete paving throughout all the city’s subdivisions.

The program follows last year’s $3 million plan that included pavement rejuvenation, involving repairing small cracks in roads with a special treatment to improve roadway flexibility. This process helps improve the durability of the city’s roads, saving the town money over time.

The 2025 project also continues 2024’s milling and overlay work. Milling is when workers remove the top layer of existing pavement to overlay the roads with a new layer of fresh, smooth asphalt.

Prioritizing paving in subdivisions is vital because several of the residential areas were constructed in the early 2000’s and are all coming due for new pavement simultaneously.

The city is also approving a $249,820 contract with Engineering Enterprises, Inc. for the project.

Running in tandem with that program, the city is also continuing the Road to Better Roads program which was established in 2013 to improve the overall quality of the city’s infrastructure.

This program differs from the Local Road Program, which is funded with local funds by using Motor Fuel Tax funds.

Each year, the city must provide a program overview to Illinois Department of Transportation for approval. This year, the program costs $1,300,000 with workers wrapping up this section of the construction program in April, 2026.

Following a roadway paving study conducted by the city’s engineering department, several strategic proposals were made to help ensure the city repairs its roadways in a cost-effective way and maximizes the longevity of its roads.

“The Pavement Management Program is a decision making process to help municipalities make cost-effective devisions with maintenance rehabilitation,” Chris Ott, with the city’s engineering team, said during a public works meeting. “It’s not necessarily fixing all the worst streets first. Sometimes it might be fixing some of the streets that are in fair and poor condition.”

The 2025 inspection study of 114.4 miles of city roadway found that 82.2% of the roadways were “good or better” with 17.8% falling into the “fair or worse” category.

“As time goes on, you get into the more costly construction, it can really start to add up,” Ott said. “So the goal of this program is to get those roads before they fall into that reconstruction category.”

The process involves providing asphalt rejuvenation treatment to a roadway a year after the street is resurfaced.

“It’s a cheap upfront cost, but it’s a lot cheaper than having to resurface it, and that will allow the road to stay in excellent condition longer, stretching out the pavement life,” Ott said.

The Pavement Management Program involves assigning a rating to each roadway in the city to assess its strategic repair costs.

According to the engineering department’s analysis, the city has resurfaced 34.4% of all roadways in the town since 2019.

The city has spent an average of $2.67 million each year resurfacing an average 5.6 miles annually. Since 2019, the city has worked on and resurfaced a total of 39.4 miles across the town.