The District of Houston is dipping into two grants received from senior governments to finance a road repair program worth just over $437,000.
LB Paving Ltd., a subsidiary of Terus Construction, the company which is undertaking the 9th Street underground and surface rehabilitation and beautification program this year, will repair road surfaces at seven locations.
At a price of $437,319.771, the contract is being financed by $421,300 taken from a major provincial grant received by the District and $20,000 from an annual federal gas tax rebate.
The location list is:
– 6th Street and Benson
– an extension to North Copeland
– Copeland and 3rd Street
– Hamblin Frontage and Kanata Ave.
– the Nadina Intersection
– Parish Road
– Omineca Way
Work to be performed includes pulverizing existing sections, adding crush and putting down an asphalt overlay. A section of Parish Road, for example, will undergo what’s called “mill and fill” in which an existing layer of asphalt is removed and new asphalt laid down in its place.
Curbs and gutters will also be replaced at some locations.
In a memo to council, District operations manager Chris Lawrence pointed out that a 2018 road asset management program recommended that $1.592 million be spent this year as part of a multi-year effort to improve and maintain District roads, approximately four times the actual size of this year’s budget.
“It was noted that some roads are deteriorating sooner than others, therefore not all the roads identified for placement … were chosen,” he wrote.
That 2018 document prepared for the District indicated it has 43.5km of asphalt roads worth $67.16 million.
Council undertook the option of directly awarding the contract to LB Paving with Lawrence indicating that parent Terus has acquired many paving companies along Hwy16.
“Repeated online searches did not identify any other independent contractors that would be able to perform the capital maintenance program within a competitive distance,” Lawrence wrote in his memo.
