The council approved a one-year construction contract with a not-to-exceed amount of more than $1.8 million, all of which comes from sales tax revenue collected by the city from Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Public Works Director Michael Leech said.
Ally General Solutions was approved by the council as contractor for the project out of five who were evaluated by the public works department using a competitive sealed proposal process, Leech said.
The bid package is broken into six segments, one per street. Though the first year stipulates repair work on Bellaire, Chimney Rock and Newcastle; three more streets—Bissonnet Street, Fournace Place and South Rice Avenue—remain, which will be contracted out in future years if funding becomes available, Leech said.
The scope of work includes asphalt repair; panel replacement; and spot repair along Bellaire, Chimney Rock and Newcastle.
The work is included as part of the city’s pavement maintenance program, which has been traditionally used since 2017 for repairs to local and neighborhood asphalt streets, which generally included just base failure replacement and an asphalt driving surface overlay, Leech said. For the next year or two, the focus will be pivoted slightly to addressing concrete repair along Bellaire’s busiest streets, Leech said.
The locations were determined using a 2017 condition assessment study of Bellaire’s street paving that shaped the city’s street reconstruction criteria, which is used in determining the priority of road projects. A pavement condition score and a drainage performance score are included in that criteria, according to the city’s agenda report.
Council Member Jim Hotze proposed postponing the vote until the next council meeting to give more time for the council to look over the information in the report and was seconded by Council Member Nathan Wesely, though it did not gain enough votes to be passed.
A subsequent motion to approve the contract was unanimously passed.
“These streets need repair, and I believe these guys have identified the right roads,” Council Member Catherine Lewis said. “I do support the contract.”
