ARLINGTON — The Arlington City Council approved infrastructure improvements and considered transportation projects March 2.

City engineer Eric Scott explained that the Community and Economic Revitalization Board grant has been applied awarded, but will require a match of $125,000 for the Arlington Valley Road design.

Arlington Valley Road is a proposed .75-mile road that would connect 67th and 74th avenues. It was planned for more than 10 years and included in the General Comprehensive Plan.

Scott asserted that construction will provide access to undeveloped land, providing a direct economic benefit to local companies such as Microgreen, AMT Senior and the NW Hardwoods site.

The council voted to accept CERB’s offer of financial aid, and to designate public works director Jim Kelly as its agent for a FEMA hazard grant application.

Kelly explained that city staff had submitted a letter of intent to FEMA to apply March 31 for a grant to replace the BNSF culvert at Prairie Creek, in the wake of last year’s Oso slide.

“This was declared an emergency disaster site after the slide,” Kelly said. “As part of the process, an application agent needs to be designated, to represent the city for paperwork and other matters.”

Kelly stepped back up to the podium for the Transportation Benefit District workshop that night, presenting a proposed cost of $180,000 for “cape seal” work on Smokey Point Boulevard, 188th Street and 47th Avenue. He noted this is significantly less than the estimate of $320,067 in the city’s 2015 workplan.

“We’d been thinking initially of putting it up for a public bid, but we spoke to Snohomish County and took a look at the work they did in Mill Creek,” Kelly said.

Kelly added that the county has an existing inter-local agreement with the city for such maintenance work. The “cape seal” would use a chip seal overlaid with asphalt emulsion, the same as the state Department of Transportation used on Highway 9 in 2014.

Kelly also reported that city staff had reviewed the quality of the roads scheduled for slurry seal preservation, before deciding that they should receive an overlay instead.

“Again, by joining the county’s bid, we would get lower prices,” Kelly said. “Overlay is a lot less weather dependent than slurry seal, and it lets you open the road a lot sooner.”

The city had scheduled slurry seal treatments for a few of its roads last year, but weather issues prevented them from being completed.