Hamlet officials are starting to revise their plans for Railroad Street upgrades. The town council previously decided to wait until January to apply for a Community Crossings matching grant, amid concerns about how to fairly reduce the scope of the project once the initial bids were opened.
During last week’s town council meeting, Engineer Lee Nagai suggested updating the specifications now, to avoid the same issues this time. “If you guys are wanting to proceed with that, I really strongly encourage you, let’s get a little bit of design done early and get a good set of specs and bid documents out there,” he told council members.
This time around, town officials say there will be more dialogue with local residents, to see whether they want new sidewalks in front of their homes. If sidewalk repair is done along with road upgrades, it qualifies for the 75-percent matching grant from the state. But for the work to happen, several trees would have to be cut down.
Council President Dave Kesvormas stressed that he didn’t want to force homeowners to part with their trees. “I don’t want that to happen, and I think that it’s just bad business,” he said. “And I think this time, we should probably see if they’re on board with it. Maybe they don’t want something.”
Nagai added that starting early might also allow the town to add drainage work that wasn’t included in the original bid specifications. “If we’ve got a little bit of time, we’ll go out and take some shots and see what’s possible,” he said, “and we could include some bid items for maybe doing a little bit of underground pipework, extending the one drain a little bit farther to the west, to help those issues out.”
Nagai said the overall goal is to make it clear to contractors what they might or might not be bidding on, so there’s no confusion this time. That would make it easier for the town council to pick and choose items and make the bid more flexible.
Council members generally agreed to let Nagai proceed with drawing up specifications. A formal agreement between Nagai and the town is expected to be presented for the council’s approval next week. He said it will be the same arrangement they had for the recent Starke Street project.
