CARIBOU, Maine — City councilors unanimously approved an agreement with the Maine Department of Transportation in which they will rehabilitate and repave High Street in Caribou.
Council okayed the project during a Jan. 28 meeting. The first component will be repairs to the storm drain system, with the second involving repaving, adding a new sidewalk on the north side of the road and installing ADA-compliant ramps.
DOT will pay for the storm drain repairs, with a projected price tag of $500,000. The second part of the project is estimated at $190,085, half of which will be funded by DOT, with the other half, roughly $95,000, coming from the city.
City Manager Dennis Marker wrote in the council packet that, since this money was already set aside when council created the 2019 budget, the repairs will have no impact on the 2019 expense budget.
Councilor Hugh Kirkpatrick asked how this repair would compare to the last time the road was repaired in 2009.
Public Works Director Dave Ouellette said that in 21 years with the department, High Street has been a consistent topic of discussion. He said DOT had turned down the city’s plan for the street roughly 10 years ago because of the associated costs, and that as a result city employees applied a one-inch overlay on the street to hold until the project could be revisited.
He added that what was done in 2009 wasn’t really a repair, it was a Band-Aid.
Caribou City Councilors unanimously voted to approve a contract between the city and the Maine Department of Transportation for a project to repair High Street during a Jan. 28 meeting. Councilors pictured from the left are Joan Theriault, Dave Martin, Jody Smith, Mayor Mark Goughan, Hugh Kirkpatrick, and Thomas Ayer. (Chris Bouchard)
Ouellette said the plan originally entailed repairing High Street last year, which was not possible because the bids were put out too late, an issue he said will not likely occur this year.
“They have good reason to believe that bids will come in at a reasonable price since they’re being sent out early,” he said of DOT.
Councilor Thomas Ayer asked Ouellette if he could say exactly how early the bids would be sent out.
The public works director said bids will likely come out in early February for the DOT’s portion of the project, at which point there will be a timeline for the project and the city can put out their bids for the other part of the project.
When Ouellette added an additional overlay would be necessary in less than 10 years, Ayer asked if the road project was “just a Band-Aid.”
“No,” said Ouellette,’ this is a good fix. “The wheel ruts are from the top, not the bottom, so we might as well plan on doing something every eight to 10 years. The traffic count on that road is crazy; it’s somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 vehicles per day.”
Ouellette said it will be either his or the city’s responsibility to get the second $190,000 portion of the work bid out. The city will not pay a penny towards the $500,000 part, he added, which may even come under budget and be closer to $400,000.
Before council unanimously agreed to accept the agreement, Mayor Mark Goughan asked Ouellette to keep city officials up to date on the bidding process.
“I do know that DOT plans to send this out to bid right off,” Ouellette said, “around the first or second week of February.”
