Orange cones mean road repairs

By Virgil Hervey

As village planners embark on a number of projects, residents will have to keep an eye out for orange cones and be prepared to make detours in their travels from one end of town to the other this summer.

While the bad news may be a slight inconvenience, the good news is that, with the passage of the new property tax levy, the Village is finally able to tackle road repairs which had been put off due to budget constraints, according to Acting Village Planner Ed Amrhein.

“We’re catching up, thanks to the levy,” he said in a recent interview.

Road work on various sections of 12 village roads is set to begin soon and continue through the first three weeks of July. Some of the more major work is contemplated for East Enon Road, and West South College Street, among others, and the work will include new curbs and curb ramps for some sections.

The Village has advertised for bidding on a waterline and sewer replacement project on South Walnut Street, designed in part to solve a water flow problem on Xenia Avenue in downtown in order to improve firefighting capacity. Bids are due by July 24. The project will include the extension of a waterline down Short Street from South Walnut Street and the installation of a hydrant in front of Downing’s Do it Best Hardware, Amrhein said. The contract should be approved at the Aug. 6 meeting of Village Council and work should start about a week later.

Much of the work will take place in front of Mills Lawn School, but the Village will do its best to avoid disrupting traffic flow when school begins, Amrhein said.

Big K Excavating, LLC, the same contractor that handled last fall’s Dayton Street sewer replacement and repaving project, was supposed to do the Walnut Street job, he said. However, the Village decided to rebid the Walnut Street project after running into problems with the completion of the Dayton Street project.

That project, which began last September, was supposed to be finished one week after Thanksgiving. But as summer arrived, the road surface still looked unfinished and the traffic striping has yet to be painted.

According to Amrhein, Big K was to apply the permanent striping, but hasn’t paid the subcontractor the upfront money to start the work.

In the push to finish before the asphalt plants closed down for the winter, the roadwork was rushed and often ran on into the night, Amrhein said. As a result, the surface is cosmetically less than perfect. However, the road subgrade is good and the pipe installation seems adequate, he said. “It’s not pretty,” he said. “But there are no puddles.”

So far the village has not officially accepted the project as completed and will hold some of the contract money for a year. According to Amrhein, the contractor ran into financial problems and hasn’t paid several of the subcontractors. As a condition of the grants the Village received for the project, the Village must be sure the subcontractors get paid. About 75 percent of the approximate $650,000 cost of the project came from grant money, Amrhein said.

“We are negotiating a close-out of the original contract,” Amrhein said. “There are several decisions to be made.”

The rough appearance of Dayton Street might be cured by the application of a seal coat, he said, although the decision of whether to go ahead with that project is yet to be made.

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com