By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Recent maintenance work to grind down bumps on parts of Canterbury and 27th Streets in Hays was not successful.

The company hired to do the work — Interstate Grinding of Garden City, which was subcontracted by APAC of Hays — did not meet expectations and the project was halted.

As part of the 2016 Street Maintenance program, diamond grinding was performed last month on sections of the concrete pavement on Canterbury between 12th and 13th and on 27th from Vine to Sherman. According to Public Works Director Greg Sund, “even after two passes, there is still about a 5/8 of an inch dip.”

“We (the city and the contractor) didn’t know at the time how much of a deflection was being caused by the warping of the street,” Sund told city commissioners last week. “When they ground the surface off the top of the street, it still leaves these dips. It’s because the street itself is warping — raising in the middle of each panel and down on the sides.”

The warping is so rare, it’s not even rated by the company doing a pavement assessment for Hays, Sund added.

“We don’t know why it’s happening. It’s happening on more than one street,” he said.

Interstate Grinding has previously done successful work in Hays and for the Kansas Department of Transportation. Sund reported the company owner said this particular project is only the second time in his 13 years of grinding that he’s not been able to achieve the results desired by the project owner.

Instead of moving ahead with a different contractor to finish the job for an additional $168,000, city commissioners directed Sund to first find out why the bumps are occurring.

Sund assured city commissioners the pavement problems “are not a public safety issue.”