After the process was already delayed once, the Town of Winamac now plans to start over from the beginning, when it comes to paving bids.
Last month, the town council delayed the opening of paving bids by two days after one company complained about the number of changes in project specifications. This week, Town Manager Brad Zellers told the council that the town could expand the list of projects by starting the bid process over. “I hate to say this word,” he said. “We’re going to rebid it for this reason: When those bids came in, we only had half enough to what we were actually going to want to spend on this. We’re going to have to rebid it because we could do twice as much work. [Water and Street Superintendent] Jeremy [Beckner] and I went out and we wrote down a bunch of other streets and we got it with the cost that the other pavement was within $30 of what we want to spend. So that’s good news.”
He added that the town will also be able to install 42 ADA-compliant sidewalk ramps as part of the work. The bids will be opened during a special session on Monday, August 29 at 7:00 a.m. in the Winamac Town Hall.
While street paving is taking place, Zellers says it’s also a good time to repair some of the curbs in town. “I’ve got several people that need some curbs replaced,” he said. “I think instead of doing the sidewalk program – we haven’t had a whole lot of interest in that, I think we may use those monies to replace some curbs, and how we’ve done in the past on curbs, it’s 50-50 on those.”
Zellers told the town council there’s $9,000 left in the sidewalk replacement budget that could be used for curbs instead. He says curb replacement costs $30 per foot.
Council President Tom Murray questioned why curb replacement should require financial assistance from homeowners. “I don’t mean to sound negative about it but, you know, a landowner – they don’t have any say-so about street trees which are between the sidewalk and the curb of the road, so I would think that the landowner wouldn’t have anything to say about the curbs either because it isn’t their responsibility,” Murray said. “But maybe I don’t understand it right.”
Zellers again pointed out that the 50-50 cost-sharing method has been used for curbs in the past. The town council agreed to move ahead with the curb replacement program.
