City Manager Ralph Brugger knows many roads and streets in the community are in disrepair.
“They’re in bad shape,” he said.
Brugger is working on a plan to resurface two of the worst Healdton roads by Spring 2010.
The stretches of road highest on Brugger’s list of priorities are a small portion of Airport Road, and the stretch of Hospital Road between Daniels and Texas Streets.
“They’re beyond patching,” Brugger said. “They need to be resurfaced.”
He discussed the issue with the city council on Nov. 2, but they tabled it until cost estimates can be determined.
The city is looking to skip the process of competitive bidding by “piggybacking” off of an already existing bid.
Brugger said that they could buy materials for the project, like asphalt or tar, at the same rate as another city or county in Oklahoma.
“That way we don’t have to go do a separate bid for each little thing,” he said.
The repair of Hospital Road is especially important, the city manager says, because of the amount of traffic it gets not only from commuter traffic, but from emergency vehicles due to its proximity to Healdton Municipal Hospital.
Brugger said the resurfacing project would cost far less than the repair of Oil City Road, which cost Carter County roughly $320,000 for 2 miles of repair.
“Ours is only 3 to 4,000 feet of road,” he said. “Less than a mile.”
The project would be paid for using the street fund, which comes from 25 percent of each cent of sales tax collected. The city manager said that the repairs to Hospital and Airport Roads would likely be the city’s single road project for 2010.
Citizens living near the trouble areas agree that something should be done about the road conditions. Jim Melton lives along Hospital Road and said that the street needs to be redone.
“It’s hard on everybody’s cars,” Melton said. “They need to fix it.”
Brugger plans to go back to the city council Dec. 21 to seek approval for the project, though repair work may not begin until the end of February, when the weather becomes more favorable for laying asphalt.
“It would be like a Christmas present,” he said of the Council’s approval.
Phil Banker 221-6542
