$644,000 Bid Awarded For Street Repairs, Avon Lake Mayor Objects

unanimously approved awarding $644,000 to Denes Concrete, a Wellington company, for this year. The money will come out of the city’s carryover fund that carries a balance in excess of $6 million. 

 Mayor K.C. Zuber again objected to tapping into the carryover fund at the June 13 council meeting.

 Councilman Martin O’Donnell, who brought forth legislation for work on the 24 streets, said the repairs were necessary.

 “The streets are getting worse,” O’Donnell said.

 O’Donnell said council waited several months to see if the city’s financial situation improved. With income tax revenues increasing as the year moved on, council went ahead with approving additional funding.

“There comes a point when you have to make an investment,” O’Donnell said, noting that it was important to neighborhoods to maintain streets and safety issues could result from streets in disrepair.

The city previously approved spending $750,000 on additional street work. Bids for the project ranged from $644,682 - $896,000, with Denes Concrete coming in lowest. Denes Concrete has previously completed work for Avon Lake. 

Zuber, twice during the June 13 council meeting, objected to the expense saying the city was facing expensive projects in the next several years and the item was not initially budgeted for 2011.

“I’m going to again express my concern about taking money out of carryover,” Zuber said. “I just hope the next time we take $600,000 out of the budget we do it at budget time.”

He previously objected to the additional paving, however council members, including Council President Greg Zilka felt that not making repairs now, could result in far more expensive repairs down the road.

“We’ve been extremely careful about spending money,” Zilka said, but noted that during the rough winter the roads have become “decrepit” and waiting another year or two to repair the roads would end up costing even more in repairs.

Residents whose streets are affected will have door hangars placed at their homes one week before work starts. Once work starts, residents will be notified in person if there driveway might be blocked or partially blocked, city engineering manager Joe Reitz said.

“There will be a lot of interaction,” Reitz said.

Work on the additional streets is scheduled to begin July 5.