County soon to select contractor for Nortek re-pave

Feb 21, 2013 (Jackson County Floridan - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Jackson County Commissioners are expected to select a contractor next month to resurface Nortek Boulevard, a county road that runs through the Compass Lake in the Hills subdivision and beyond.

The Florida Department of Transportation is funding the project at $1.7 million through its Small County Road Assistance Program. Jackson County Engineer Larry Alvarez said he anticipates that the project will come in under budget and that it should be completed within 120 days once the work starts on the 4.4 miles of roadway.

John Laymon, manager of the subdivision's property owners association, says the progress is welcome and that the community hopes yet more can be accomplished on Nortek. In addition to the repaving set for the asphalt-surfaced portion of the road, subdivision residents would also like to see the county pave the remainder of the road, he said, a roughly 2.5-mile dirt stretch.

Laymon said the road is "extraordinarily important" to the community in part because it is an important corridor for the fire department.

"We are pleased and appreciative that they're repaving what's already paved, and we'd love to see the dirt section paved also," Laymon said. "Not too many months in the past, we were responding to a fire call and our engine got in some of the loose dirt beside the road and at that point encountered an oncoming auto. The truck slid off in a ditch while responding to a call. That's not good. We've talked to our commissioner (Jeremy Branch) and he has really worked hard on our behalf, but it's difficult to come up with additional dollars to do that. We can continue to press and push, and the state can be helpful in this regard because it's a safety issue." The county board approved specifications for the resurfacing work on the paved portion of Nortek last week in its regular first-of-the-month meeting, and handled some other road-related matters as well in the same session.

For instance, commissioners also approved final contract costs for some parking areas that had been repaved at the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, and immediately afterward also authorized additional asphalt work there. In the original contract, Jones Construction was paid $57,242 to repave the sheriff's existing parking lots. The newly-authorized work will be carried out for an additional $15,115 under Jones' annual paving contract for jobs of this scope with the county.

For safety reasons, the company will relocate the sheriff's heli-pad to a spot further away from its current location adjacent to the office complex. The company will also pave a currently milled-only area where personnel with the Department of Juvenile Justice now park at the sheriff's department. Jones will also slope the entrance to the sheriff's impound area to prevent the area from continuing to accumulate standing water.

In other road-related decisions, the county also removed almost $200,000 worth of planned work from a chip-seal and paving preservation project that began in 2011 and is being carried out by Asphalt Paving Systems. This is the sixth and final change order authorized on that multi-road project that began as a $2.5 million job and which now stands at $3.3 million as the result of multiple increases in the scope of the project.

This latest change order was one of the only adjustments that resulted in a significant reduction in the contract price. It will remove Satellite Road from the work list, and that job will be re-bid separately later this year, according to statements included in the county's agenda item for the session in which the decision was made.

The first five change orders on this project added roads or reshuffled the amount of work being done on various parts of the job. The first change, approved in April of last year, added Neal's Landing and Liberty Hill Roads to the chip-seal/preservation project. The second, approved last May, added Butler and Little Zion Roads. The third, approved last August, added Hamilton, Stephens and Bevis roads to the contract. The fourth change was made in September of last year, "making adjustments to the quantities," according to the agenda item. The fifth change order was approved last November and added asphalt to a Mashburn Road project.

The work is being done as part of a $10 million road improvement project the county took on in 2010 and which is now reaching completion.

The county also approved a second change order related to another project being done by Jones Construction to improve the section of Crystal Road which runs from where it meets Buttercup Road to where it meets Lovewood Road. The contract started as a $137,814 project in November of 2012, but in January of this year the target area for improvement was increased by 64 feet.

Additionally at that time, the county also authorized some widening so as to provide a pull-out on Lovewood Road. Those changes resulted in a contract increase of almost $11,000. Soon after, the contractor submitted for more money because the amount of sod needed for the project had overrun expectations. The second change order was approved to account for the $335 overage.

___ (c)2013 the Jackson County Floridan (Marianna, Fla.) Visit the Jackson County Floridan (Marianna, Fla.) at www.jcfloridan.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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