Bid for town roadwork is a heart-stopper

The lone bid to reconstruct Hawthorne Drive in the Town of Port Washington came in at almost $260,000, which is roughly half of the town’s annual operating budget.

The Town Board recently rejected the bid for the 1-1/4-mile project after the cost came in significantly higher than expected.

Payne and Dolan bid $258,000 on the project, which would have extended from Highway KK to Highway H.

That amount doesn’t include the cost of installing a new culvert that’s needed, board members noted.

The town, which anticipated rebuilding both Hawthorne Drive and Dynna Drive, budgeted a total $140,000 for road projects this year.

“This is more than I was expecting,” Town Chairman Jim Melichar said when he opened the Hawthorne Drive bid on June 3. “There goes the budget.”

Jeff Bond of Payne and Dolan told the board, “I knew the reaction would be ‘Wow.’ Asphalt costs went up significantly, significantly in the last year.”

The road budget was based on the reconstruction of Northwoods Road last year, a 1-1/8-mile project that cost the town $144,000, Melichar said, adding he knew costs were increasing but he didn’t think they would go as high as they did.

“I was thinking  it would come in around $160,000,” he said.

Board members mulled several options for the work, debating whether to take money from the town’s fund balance to cover the balance of the cost — something Melichar said might necessitate a special meeting of the electors to approve a budget amendment — or simply overlaying the pavement on Hawthorne.

“It’s fairly cracked,” Bond said. “You can do an overlay, but the cracks will reappear. 

“It might buy you a few years, but it’s more of a Band-Aid than a solution.”

Payne and Dolan also bid $35,776 to reconstruct Dynna Drive, and Supr. Mike Didier suggested that might be the better project to undertake this year.

“One area of Dynna’s not just cracked, it’s gone,” he said. “Dynna’s worse than Hawthorne. If something had to get done and something didn’t, I think that would have to be Dynna.”

Melichar and Supr. Gary Schlenvogt, who lives on Hawthorne Drive, concurred.

“If we don’t have the money, we can’t do it,” Schlenvogt said.

Board members agreed to repair Dynna Drive and reserve the money remaining in the road budget to repair Hawthorne Drive next year, agreeing to supplement the funds with a 2020 budget appropriation.

“This makes sense,” Schlenvogt said.

“We hate to reject (the Hawthorne bid), but there’s only so much money,” Melichar said. 

In the meantime, the board agreed, they will do some patch work on Hawthorne and install a needed culvert to ensure the road will last until it can be rebuilt.