City, county partner on roads

 Red Oak is partnering with Montgomery County officials to extend its 2016 street improvement project.

At its meeting March 21, the Red Oak City Council approved a contract with Henningson Construction, Inc. for work on Summit and Oak streets as part of the project. Red Oak Mayor Bill Billings said the extension would cover city and county shared roadways between Sunny Slope and Ironwood Drive. 

Red Oak City Manager Brad Wright said the roadways had been under consideration since the project was reviewed last year.

“At that time, we’d had conversations with county engineer Brad Skinner and the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, and it didn’t move forward. Also, we had to reduce the scope of the project after the bids came in anyway,” Wright said.

Wright said, recently they decided to look at the project again and pay for the additions by stretching the DOT grant dollars.

“We have contacted Henningson Construction and they are agreeable to the idea. They believe they can work that in. The additional project is around $129,000 but there are things that could bring that cost down,” Wright said.

With those factors in place, the project was estimated at closer to an additional $100,000. With this plan in place, the bill would be split.

“The idea would be they would pay for half of the cost, and we would pay the other half, but our half would have 80 percent paid for by DOT funding,” Wright said.

Wright said it made sense to get the project completed all the way to Ironwood Avenue.

Billings agreed if the plan was  to pave Oak and Summit it made sense to pave the rest of the roadway and partner with the county.

“It’s a whole lot cheaper to do it this way, for both parties, than to re-mobilize in another year and pay the $84,000 in mobilization costs. It gets us to the bridge, which is a much more natural breaking spot,” Billings said.

The council agreed to allow Wright to pursue the agreement with Montgomery County officials. A pre-construction meeting between the city and Henningsen Construction took place Wednesday, April 6.

On Thursday last week, the county supervisors agreed to partner with Red Oak on the project.

Skinner said the partnership would be advantageous to the county.

“It’s the segment we’re responsible for that’s currently in the worst condition. We can do some maintenance patching and extend the life of old 34,” Skinner said.

Also, Skinner said it would not take away funding from any other projects as funding was already programmed as a city project, with the county’s participation.

Wright said continued conversations will take place with the contractor regarding the extension. 

The supervisors approved a motion to proceed with the partnership.