AUBURN – Sid Hazelton warned city councilors to hold on – the next few minutes of Monday’s meeting were about to get very bumpy.

“This is an example of a road that’s right on the edge” he said, standing at the front of a purple CityLink bus as it turned onto Garden Circle. The long cul-de-sac just off Hardscrabble Road needs pavement work, according to Hazelton, the city’s assistant public works director.

“It’s not too bad yet, but it needs some maintenance soon,” he said. If it gets worse, fixing it will be much more expensive. That makes it a perfect example of problems the public works faces all over the city.

The road was one up-close-and-personal opportunity councilors had Monday to see something they’d talked about in their Auburn Hall chambers.

City staff led them on a two hour, 20 minute tour of the city – starting at Auburn Hall south, through New Auburn to Danville, north past the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport to Summer Street and back to Auburn Hall.

City Manager Pat Finnigan said it was chance to put a lot of different City Council information in context.

“Councilors hear a lot about these places, but they might not get a chance to see them,” she said. Tour stops include roads in need of paving, illegal junkyards, private development projects and city-owned parks.

But a key feature was showing councilors the breadth of the city.

“Every time you hear someone talk about how Auburn is 60 square miles, you might have a better idea of what that actually means,” Finnigan said.

Finnigan said the tour was scheduled to continue north of Summer Street, past Lake Auburn. But the tour ran out of time and sunlight at about 7:30 p.m., so they ended it at about 32 miles. They’d planned to go for about 50 miles.

“But it goes much slower in a bus,” she said.

Finnigan said her tour had the desired effect. Councilors got to see places they didn’t know existed.

Ward 4’s Bruce Bickford said he was surprised at how many small parks were located downtown. The first five minutes of the tour brought councilors past Bonney, Moulton, Drummond, Little Androscoggin and Raymond parks. Each one is relatively new.

“I can’t believe how many of these there are within a few square miles of downtown,” he said.

Community Services Director Eric Labelle used the opportunity to show councilors the problem with paving the roads in the Danville area. Neighbors want the city to pave Station Road, a piece of asphalt caught between the St. Lawrence and Atlantic and the Guilford Rail lines.

“We don’t actually own it,” Labelle said. “The rail companies do. And it’s not actually a road. It was more of a paved parking lot.”

But Danville residents use it anyway, he said. They avoid the city-owned Black Cat Road, a gravel street to the north.

Finnigan also pointed out some city-owned parcels, including the old Franklin School off of Pine Street. City officials are eager to sell those lots, but it’s not always easy.

“We’ve had offers, but they seem to fall through,” she said.