The Hamlet Town Council has chosen a contractor for the Division Street paving project, but sidewalk installation may have to be scaled back. Plans call for Division Street to be resurfaced between Railroad and Terry streets, with a possible addition of a sidewalk on one side.
When it came to the entire project, E & B Paving submitted the lower bid at just over $169,000, while Walsh & Kelly was almost $173,000. But Clerk-Treasurer Kristina Pitts pointed out that the town was only awarded a little more than $148,000 in Community Crossings Grant funding from the state. The Community Crossings Grant is only supposed to cover 75 percent of the project cost.
In any case, Pitts suggested cutting out some of the sidewalk work to lower the cost, noting that some property owners don’t want the sidewalk anyway. Without the sidewalk, Walsh & Kelly actually ended up being the low bidder at under $86,000, compared to almost $92,000 for E & B Paving.
Town officials spent several minutes trying to calculate a cost comparison for a shorter-length sidewalk from Pearl to Terry streets. In the end, council members agreed to select Walsh & Kelly based on its low bid for the paving work and discuss a potential cost for the reduced sidewalk work. The Community Crossings program does not allow for the project to be split up between the two contractors.
