City council approves significant road improvements

By Kayleigh Rahn
South Niles Street will be under construction shortly after the first of August following the Tuscola City Council’s action during its meeting Monday, July 9 for pavement maintenance.

The council approved the Niles Street that work will span from the railroad tracks to Route 36 and will involve a mill and overlay process.

Ne-Co Asphalt came in with the low bid of $119,666.40.

“This is less than the engineer’s estimate by almost 10 percent, which we feel is reflective of the extremely competitive bidding environment,” city administrator Drew Hoel said in his bi-monthly notes. “

And the city hopes to continue to take advantage of the competitive environment with more roadwork to come this year as three more roads will be improved using a process called cape seal. The cape seal process conversation began during the preliminary budget discussion this winter, Hoel said.

We had questions about which roads were selected and why,” Hoel said.

The city has oil and chip roads, curb and gutter (some of which are oil and chip), concrete roads, and hot mix asphalt. The city initially considered every asphalt road, because those roads are candidates for preservation techniques that can extend the life of the road, including cape seal.

“Cape seal is a way to extend the life of that road without rebuilding it,” Hoel said. “You can’t use these techniques on other types of streets.”

On the map, the green roads are in good shape, according to the city, Hoel said. The yellow roads are the currently in question under the feasibility analysis.

“We also talked about South Washington (highlighted in blue), which is not a candidate for cape seal,” Hoel said. “It is too far gone as was South Niles. We will need to do to South Washington what you have approved for South Niles. It’s a pretty big ticket item for the future.”

The full story can be found in the Wednesday, July 11 edition of The Tuscola Journal.