Procurement News Notice |
|
| PNN | 9434 |
| Work Detail | The town’s summer road work has been slowed by a quirk of the market economy. “We’re having a problem. We can’t get catch basin tops,” said Public Works Director Peter Hill. “We replace all the catch basin tops when we pave, and make all the repairs necessary. “The contractors we buy our catch basin tops from, United and M&S Precast, they can’t get the steel, the framework that holds the grate in place. You’ve got to have that,” Hill said. “They’ve got plenty of cement, but we can’t get the steel. “We ran out of tops. But we’re not going to pave roads without doing the drainage work,” Hill said. “The steel grates,” First Selectman Rudy Marconi said. “There was a shortage of steel and as a result all municipalities were restricted in their orders. “We would need as many as 40,” he said, “… and they would ship us 20.” Catch basins are a standard part of the road drainage systems. The steel grated tops are the gateways for getting stormwater off the paved surface and into the catch basin box under the road. There, the sand and other material carried by the water falls below the level of the basin’s out-pipe, which delivers the runoff to watercourses in the nearby landscape while most of the sand and pollutants remain behind, caught in the bottom of the catch basin. Highway department crews periodically use a “vactor truck” to suck the collected material out of the catch basins. “We’ve got over 6,000 catch basins in town,” Hill said. “Some roads have 10, 12. Some have 20.” The shortage of catch-basin tops has posed problems, and not just for RIdgefield. “The state’s been buying them up all winter. They make about 70 a day and the state’s been grabbing all of them,” Hill said. “It’s kind of like what they do with the salt in the winter. They horde that, too,” he said. “So we’re waiting on that, along with the contractors themselves. They’ve got a lot of work going on in other towns. So, they’ve got to schedule us,” Hill said. Voters in the May budget referendum approved $1,875,000 for roads and infrastructure work as part of the 2016-17 budget — some intended for projects to bring the town into better compliance with the American with Disabilities Act, but most of it for routine annual road repairs and repaving. On top of that, Marconi said, there was about $400,000 in “TAR money” — TAR for “town aid, road” — that comes from the state each year. The state money is usually set aside and used to help cover winter plowing expenses. But after a relatively mild winter the selectmen designated $400,000 that wasn’t needed to cover plowing costs for road work. That combines to make a total of $2,275,000 for the 2016-17 paving program, which is still down a little from the previous year — it follows an appropriation of $2,750,000 in the 2015-16 budget year, which ended June 30. Some of this spring and summer’s completed work was under that 2015-16 appropriation. “We’ve done a number of roads out of last year’s budget,” Hill said. The roads where work has been done this spring and summer include Dlhy Court, Saw Mill Hill Road, Mulberry Street, Chestnut Hill Road, Twelfth Lane and sections of Barrack Hill Road and Old Sib Road. Roads that were done in the first part of the 2015-16 budget year — last summer and fall — include Brook Lane, Beechwood Lane, Belvedere Court, Blacksmith Ridge, Cains Hill Road/Farmingville Road, Doubleday Lane, East Ridge Road, parts of Governor Street and Grove Street, Hulda Lane, Limekiln Road, Powdermaker Drive, Tanton Hill Road, Old Town Road, Peaceable Ridge Road, Pelham Lane, Shadow Lake Road, Wilridge Road, part of Nursery Road, and the driveway to the Barlow Mountain and Scotland School complex. Hill said Ridgefield’s repaving program is ambitious. “Last year and this spring we did about 11 miles of road,” Hill said. “Nobody’s doing 11 miles of road. Danbury doesn’t do 11 miles of road. So, we’re busy.” There’s more Hill is trying to get done. “We’ve got a few more roads,” he said, “We’re going to be doing a partial on Barlow Mountain from 116 to North Street, we’re doing Cedar Lane, Deer Hill, Hamilton, Laurel Lane. We’re doing a partial on Limestone, from Great Hill to Bates Farm. We’re doing Mead Ridge — there’s two sections on Mead Ridge. We’re doing New Road, North Street, Old Trolley and Remington, Rolling Hills Road. “We’ve got a list of roads we’d like to get done,” Hill said. “Don’t know if it’s going to happen.” The highway department’s crews do most of the preparation, including the drainage work. But the milling — grinding down of the old road surface — and the paving, is done by contractors. “We have to schedule with the milling contractor and paving contractor to come in after we’re ready, after we’ve done our work,” Hill said. Arranging for the contractors “could take a while, because they’re in other towns, doing work,” Hill said. The difficulty getting catch-basin tops becomes a roadblock to the milling and paving if the town can’t get enough of them to do all the preparatory work, which includes putting in new drainage systems. “We’re not going to have them come in and do nothing,” Hill said. “As soon as we get the material in, we’ll have them out.” The town has been getting some catch basin tops — just not as many as it wants or needs to do all the drainage work planned. “We had a delivery, we got some in. It gave us enough to get Old West Mountain done,” Hill said, “And we’re waiting for more to come in.” He was hopeful that three roads — Rolling Hills Road, Laurel Lane and New Road — would have contractors in to start milling and paving soon — possibly at the end of this week. The plan is for work to continue into the fall — if the town can get the needed catch basin tops, and then get the milling and paving contractors scheduled. “As long as the weather holds, we’ll probably pave right up until November,” Hill said. “We’d like to get as much done as possible because we only have a short period in the spring. The (asphalt) plants don’t open unit mid April.” “The overall paving program remains pretty much on schedule, with a few delays here and there,” Marconi said. “… whatever we don’t get done in the fall rolls over into the spring.” Of course, that’s assuming the town will be able to get enough catch-basin tops. “Every day’s an adventure,” said Hill. |
| Country | United Kingdom , Northern Europe |
| Industry | Construction |
| Entry Date | 15 Oct 2016 |
| Source | http://www.theridgefieldpress.com/73075/paving-program-progresses-despite-bumps-in-the-road/ |
