An extensive consent agenda led to several important changes Monday evening.
One of the city’s hidden gems is the dog park located at 904 N. Pennsylvania Ave. For years, the park has remained an oddity in the community as the parking lot is on one side of Eastside Canal and the fenced-in park is on the other. Instead of utilizing the parking lot, many attendees simply pull their vehicles up to the facility and park in the dirt.
City Manager Bill McDaniel made it a priority for the city to upgrade the facility. The plan was to develop construction plans for a pedestrian bridge, sidewalks, lighting and a paved parking lot for the park. The pedestrian bridge was a massive undertaking in and of itself but, once completed, it will connect the newly-paved parking lot to the dog park.
The proposed improvements require an Environmental Resource Permit from the Southwest Water Management District (SWFWMD). SWFWMD reviewed the City’s permit application and “determined that the proposed paved parking area and new sidewalks require mitigation to compensate the flood plain.”
This caused a bit of a hiccup in the city’s plan, but on June 17 Kimley-Horn, with whom the city has a continuing contract for its engineering services, submitted a cost proposal for the additional engineered services required by SWFWMD. The proposal was for a not-to-be-exceeded price of $6,825 and requires additional time, bumping the total up to a 170-day project timeline.
The funds are available through the Public Parking Lot Paving Fund and commissioners unanimously approved increasing the budget and the timeline on Monday evening.
The city finalized its promises of even more road resurfacing Monday night as well.
Last month the city approved McDaniel’s plan to use the savings from the project bids for the Street Resurfacing Project to add even more streets to the finalized list of roads to be paved in the 2018-19 fiscal year. The project was advertised for bid on June 22 and five applicants reached out in hopes of nabbing the contract.
C.W. Roberts Contracting, Inc. was the lowest responsive and responsible bid, coming in at $687,133.17. Some of the highest bids were from $775,451.70 to $1,049,364.34.
The city selected the new list of 23 streets based on the preliminary pavement asset management plan Pavement Condition Index, a visual survey and the sanitary sewer assessment results.
Attempting to pick the last of the “low-hanging fruit,” commissioners agreed to address as many roads that could be easily fixed and were in desperate need of repair as quickly as possible.
Once all the simpler roads are paved, the city will have to focus a large portion of the resurfacing budget on addressing utility repairs under the roads, then the actual roads themselves.
Commissioners unanimously approved the contract and C. W. Roberts is now officially adding the streets to its workload. Interestingly enough, many of the streets selected are either collector or neighborhood streets.
The repairs are coming to people’s homes and will ultimately make commuting and zipping around the city much less stressful.
