Bid award puts Elm Ave. paving back on track

NEWTOWN BOROUGH - A repaving and milling project on South Elm Avenue between Lafayette and Washington is back on track after a dispute with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation over the Tualifications of the low bidder on the project delayed work by about a month.

Work was originally scheduled to take place this summer, but was delayed after PennDOT rejected the low bidder on the project, GoreCon, Inc., because it said the company was not a PennDOT-certified con- tractor.

Borough solicitor William Bolla said while council could move forward with the project using the low bidder, without PennDOT’s backing it would forgo the option of paying for the work out of its liquid fuels budget and would instead have to dip into the borough’s general fund.

Another option, said borough engineer Mario Canales, would be to rebid the project, which he said would require additional advertising costs and another delay.

“By rebidding, it’s a roll of dice of what we’re going to get back,” said Canales, noting that the price of gas has gone up in the last few weeks impacting the cost of the project.

He recommended instead going with the second lowest bidder, Kehoe Construction. Kehoe bid $38,024 for the work, which is $5,300 higher than GoreCon’s low bid of $32,764.

Canales said even though the bid is higher, it’s still below the $65,000 originally estimated for the project. The five bids the borough received for the work ranged from a low of $32,764 to a high of $42,000.

“There are other considerations we can look at,” added Council President Bob Walker. “The first one is not to do the project. We did determine that Elm Avenue would probably survive another year. But you run the same risk of where the price of gas, where the price of oil is going to be this time next year.”

The other option, said Walker, would be to take the money out of the borough’s roads budget and stay with the low bidder.

The problem with that option, he said, is that the borough has been working to build up the roads fund to repave the parking lot behind the borough hall “which is in very bad shape. So we would further be postponing potential work on that parking lot.”

After some deliberation, council voted unanimously to go with the second lowest bidder on the project.