The Normal Town Council is being asked to approve $2.28 million for road resurfacing at its Monday night meeting. The resurfacing program is broken up into two parts in accordance with funding sources. First is the General program which is for $1.11 million. And second is the Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) program which is 1.17 million. The council is being asked to award both contracts to Rowe Construction.
Included in the General Fund Resurfacing list is a portion of N. Parkside Rd. from Gregory Dr. to Braden St. Remaining roads in that program are neighborhood streets.
The MFT program includes N. Parkside Rd. from Braden St. to College Ave., W. Virginia Ave. from Franklin to Broadway, E. Virginia Ave. from Constitution Trail to Linden St., and S. Fell St. from Vernon Ave. to Virginia Ave.
Above is a video of State Rep. candidate James Fisher, who is running for the 91st state house district
The staff report to council does not include how many lane miles of streets are included in this year’s resurfacing program. The lane miles maintained by the town is also not available in the report or on the town website. Therefore it is not possible to determine how many years it would take to repave all town streets at this rate. Likewise no estimate of adequacy can be attained from existing data readily available. Cities 92.9 will seek answers to these questions at the council meeting.
Rowe was the only bidder on both projects. Therefore there was no real price competition to control prices. Without this competition residents may be overpaying for services.
Cities has learned that local preference policies may be resulting in no competition when it comes to repaving projects. While everyone likes the sound of using local businesses, these policies may be costing residents hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. The funds that might be saved could be used to resurface more streets in the town annually. Perhaps it might be appropriate to revisit the application of the local preference policies and whether or not it is beneficial to apply them to repaving projects.
Cities is also aware that without local preference policies at least one more paving company in the region might be interested in bidding resurfacing projects in the twin cities. Tobey’s Construction in Pontiac was founded in 1938 and is experienced in all types of heavy highway construction.
An out of town contractor such as this already has a handicap when it comes to bidding because they have to ship the asphalt in from their plant and that adds to costs. So a local contractor has an advantage when it comes to putting together a bid. In the interest of competition and good governance it might be wise to waive the local preference policy when it comes to asphalt paving.
