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NEWPORT — Of the 44 blocks of roads the City of Newport worked on this summer, all had failed in some area.
That means potholes, surrounding breakage and other damage had compromised the integrity of the road’s base, requiring the city to recycle those areas and build a new base.
It was this damage that prompted the city to start performing road maintenance last year, when that work was done on 36 blocks of roads. This year, the work continued from mid-June to mid-September.
“We did 44 blocks, so pretty much the core in between downtown and the park and schools, with a few outlying areas,” city administrator Abby Gribi said. “Lots of areas were failed and just disintegrating.”
Gribi expects this and last year’s road maintenance to improve Newport’s road rating. Assigned by the state Transportation Improvement Board, Newport’s road rating is 66.4 out of 100 — the lowest in Pend Oreille County, which has an overall road rating of 70 out of 100.
“They only come out and do assessments every few years,” Gribi said. “So that’s before they’re doing the assessments of the work we’ve done the past two years.”
TIB granted the city about $260,000 to perform this year’s road maintenance, Gribi said. That is the same amount of funding the city received last year and applied for again for next year.
Most of the work consists of chip seal application, a process involving several steps: grinding, patching and grading, applying asphalt and curing, spreading crushed stone and compacting and finally, removing loose gravel with multiple sweeps. Over the summer, the city chip-sealed Second Street, Third Street, Fourth Street, Fifth Street, Scott Avenue and Warren Avenue, among others.
Roads chip-sealed last year were then fog-sealed this year, including two test sites on Spokane and Scott Avenues. The fog seals, Gribi said, adhered everything together and mitigated dust caused by the road maintenance.
“TIB will fund it the year after you do the work,” Gribi said. “And so, we did apply it to several blocks on the south side of town that were done last year as well.”
Crews worked on the roads for around three days a week, Gribi said.
With the chip and fog seal applications complete, Gribi said that all the city had left to do was spot-sweep areas of roads with leftover gravel. This spot-sweeping may persist until snowfall.
The roads maintained so far have an extended lifespan of five to seven years. Under the city’s consideration are additional re-applications of the chip seals, which may extend the roads’ lifespans by up to 15 years. More grants from TIB would fund those.
Had the city replaced instead of repaired the roads — by tearing up and regrading them, or by grinding and overlaying them — Gribi said the $260,000 granted by TIB would have only funded two or three blocks of work. The city would have had to replace not just the roads themselves, but also the water lines, sewer lines and other infrastructure underground.
“We’re really trying to work within the equipment we have and protect the integrity of the roads,” Gribi said. “It’s a preservation treatment.”
To fund next year’s road maintenance, the city applied for two grants from TIB: one for chip seals, another for fog seals. Gribi said the city is to receive the results in November or December. With approval from TIB, the work will continue again next summer around the same timeframe, mid-June to mid-September. As of now, the city has yet to decide on which roads to maintain.
Funding from TIB will be included in the city’s 2026 budget. If the city does not receive that funding until after the budget is prepared or passed, the city will amend it to add those funds.
“We’re thinking positive that we’ll get it,” Gribi said.
For now, the city is focused on preserving the roads as it identifies larger transportation projects, Gribi said. Those projects may replace infrastructure underground or in other parts of the city. They will be outlined in Newport’s Comprehensive Plan, which the city aims to adopt by February 2027.
“We’ll be doing a deep dive into the transportation needs of the city and prioritize the different projects,” Gribi said.
