City installs spruced up street signs

Published 11:30 am Thursday, December 11, 2008

By Dennis Box

The Courier-Herald

New street signs have begun popping up around Bonney Lake and more are on the way.

Kasondria Sharer, a maintenance worker at the city's Public Works Department, and Christopher Blake, a laborer for the department, put up 20 signs last week and have nearly 300 more to go in the first wave.

&#8220The priority is the main arterials first,” said Steve Willadson, the street and storm lead for the department. &#8220Next we will do the collector streets and local access.”

Willadson said the city will continue until all signs are replaced.

New developments are required to put in the new signs, but the rest of the signs will be replaced by the city.

According to Public Works Director Dan Grigsby, each sign will cost the city $29 and the entire process should take about two years. The city will replace about 300 this year and finish the job in 2007.

The signs are 9 inches high and 36 inches long with 3-inch block letters.

&#8220The signs are bigger and easier to read, particularly at night because they are reflective,” Grigsby said. &#8220Also, the name Bonney Lake is on the left side.”

The signs are in three colors. Green indicates public streets, blue are for private streets and brown designate historical streets.

Also, the city is replacing all wooden posts with break-away metal post.

&#8220It takes a couple of minutes to replace a metal post,” Grigsby said. &#8220But the wooden posts are in concrete and have to be dug out.”

The most recent count of street identification signs in the city came in at 407, up from 186 in 2000. The total number of signs is 1,337, which includes street signs plus 660 regulatory, 234 warning and 36 informational signs.

There are 66.7 miles of paved streets in the city, including 4.2 miles of state Route 410 East. In 2000 there were 48.31 miles of paved streets.

Dennis Box can be reached at dbox@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/courierherald.