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The Washington City Council at its March meeting awarded a $419,494.20 contract for street resurfacing and improvements to Garris Grading & Paving Inc., setting the stage for projects that the city says will help enhance its vehicle and pedestrian transportation infrastructure.

The current fiscal year budget had no initial appropriations for street resurfacing. The Public Works Department had requested City Council’s consideration for an allocation of $500,000 for 22 resurfacing projects within the city limits.

“These were in our current resurfacing plans,” City manager Jonathan Russell said. “We’ve kind of fallen behind a little due to some budget shortfalls.”
Russell called the pricing of the project “favorable.”

Some of the streets set to be resurfaced were listed in the fiscal year 2019-20 budget, but those projects were delayed due to a lack of funding, as Russell mentioned.

“This would bring us back in line — we wouldn’t be deferring maintenance any further on this,” Russell said. “And I think we’ve got more streets that we could improve. And we may be able to use the remaining $80,000 that was allocated by Council on a per-unit cost with Garris to see if we could stretch that a little further.”

The Public Works Department also requested an allocation of $200,000 to be used for adding new sidewalks and repairing existing ones, including some that are non-ADA compliant.