BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials decided to do more than talk about the weather and hired a paving company to get county road work done on time.
County Judge Bob Clinard said he approved having a contractor do two projects, giving the Road Department a chance to keep on schedule for paving work through the end of the year. Clinard said constant wet weather has held up the road work, and he wanted to make certain the county meets its schedule.
Road work
Benton County’s 2015 road plan included about 11 miles of asphalt new construction and just under 20 miles of asphalt overlay. the county planned to do another 13.5 miles of new double chip and seal construction and about nine miles of single chip and seal overlay. The county budgeted about $2.2 million for the road work.
Source: Benton County
Jeff Clark, public services administrator and head of the Road Department, said the county awarded two contracts to Decco Contractors of Rogers. Clark said the company will do work on Leetown Road in the Pea Ridge area and on Punkin Hollow Road in the Bentonville-Bella Vista area.
The projects call for two-inch asphalt overlays with new road striping. He said the low bid from Decco on the Punkin Hollow Road work was $238,712, and the company's low bid on the Leetown Road work was $404,771.
Clark said the work should begin about Aug. 1 and be done about the beginning of September. Each contract allows for 30 working days.
The county's road plan for 2015 calls for 53.3 miles of paving work, but work has been hampered by frequent heavy rain. Clark said he still thinks the county can meet the target.
"We're getting ready to move into the chip and seal portion of the work and that will move pretty quickly," he said.
Clark expects the county road crews to do all of the work remaining, aside from the two contracts approved this week.
"We'll be 40 miles into our schedule by the end of August," he said. "With these two projects being subcontracted out, that will give us about 5.5 miles to finish in September."
Clinard said Clark thought the county might have been able to do all of the work without hiring a contractor, but he wanted to make sure. He said there is money in the Road Department budget to pay for the contract work.
"It was my decision. So we picked out these two roads. They can be done without our people being taken away from trying to catch up from the wet weather," Clinard said.
Pat Adams, justice of the peace for District 6 and chairman of the county's Transportation Committee, said he has no objection to the county contracting the paving work. Adams agreed the unusually wet weather made the decision easier.
"I feel pretty confident we would've made it without the rain we've had from February to just the other day. It cost us three or four weeks," he said.
Tom Allen, justice of the peace for District 4 and chairman of the county's Finance Committee, said he's not concerned with the county contracting the work, as long as it makes sense fiscally.
"A lot of us have been asking to see what the benefits and negatives are for using more contract paving," Allen said. "As long as the judge thinks he can get this done within the budget, I'm OK. If they're going to come back and ask for more money, that's different."
Allen said the 2015 road plan was larger than those in recent years, and the county will need to examine it closely during the fall budget process to be sure the 2016 plan doesn't ask the Road Department to do more than it can handle.
"The weather has been terrible for asphalt work, but even without the weather, it was a very aggressive plan," Allen said. "We'll see how they end up this year. They should be done for the most part by the time we get into the budget."
NW News on 07/27/2015