Citing too little time and an unacceptably high bid, the city council voted to delay the first phase of the downtown street overlay project until next spring.

Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Citing too little time and an unacceptably high bid, the city council voted to delay the first phase of the downtown street overlay project until next spring.

City Manager Paul Sparks said the only bid submitted for the project was too high – $616,000 for a job estimated by engineers to cost $534,000.

&uot;We can’t really accept the bid, even if we wanted to, because it’s more than 15 percent higher than the estimate,&uot; Sparks said.

By waiting until the spring, the city would would probably get more interest in the project, said City Engineer Dave Olson. The end of August is too late in the season for most contractors to take on such a big project, he said. Not only was the job limited to 25 working days, but most bituminous plants usually shut down in October.

&uot;The time line was too strict, so the one bid we received came in too high. The contractor was protecting itself against the time constraints,&uot; Olson said. &uot;By doing this next year, we think we’re going to get more contractors, and we can give them more time.&uot;

The entire project will involve resurfacing 29 downtown blocks of street with blacktop, the first significant downtown street rehabilitation since the mid 1970s, said Olson.

Using a large milling machine, workers will grind the existing blacktop down to the old concrete underneath and resurface with new blacktop. To minimize inconvenience to the businesses, the contractor will have between 24 and 36 hours to lay the new blacktop for each block, Olson said.

The project was originally conceived in four phases over four years, but the city decided last year to condense the work into two phases because the streets were beginning to deteriorate quickly, Olson said.

&uot;Now we’ll be tackling the whole project in the spring,&uot; he said. &uot;It will probably work out to be less expensive to do it all in the same season.&uot;