The cost to replace roads in one of Arnold’s oldest subdivisions and to repair the Arnold Recreation Center parking lot has ended up being higher than expected.
The city will pay $670,034.87 more to Spencer Contracting of Arnold to complete this year’s street maintenance projects, which included replacing roads in the Bayshore subdivision, repairing Haag Road and repairing and repaving the Arnold Recreation Center parking lot.
The original contract for the three projects was $4,047,269.45. However, Arnold will now pay a total of $4,717,304.32 for the projects due to change orders for additional work to complete the Bayshore street replacement and rec center parking lot improvements, according to board documents.
City Council members voted 6-0 on Oct. 16 to approve paying an additional $107,101.25 to complete work in the Bayshore subdivision. Ward 1 Councilman EJ Fleischmann and Ward 4 Councilman Michael Rethmeyer were absent from the meeting.
Interim Public Works director James Pogorzelski told the council he believes that change order would be the last for this year’s projects.
With that last change order, the city will pay a total of $477,202.01 more for the Bayshore project and $192,832.86 more for work at the rec center than originally anticipated.
Pogorzelski said the work in Bayshore is expected to be completed early next month. The rec center parking lot project was completed in May.
“(Bayshore) was just a large scale project,” he said. “We normally don’t do whole subdivisions like this. (The additional cost) is not good, but it could have been worse.”
Bayshore, which is off Telegraph Road, has more than 300 homes, and its streets include Bayshore Parkway, Biscayne Boulevard, Boca Raton Drive, Ballast Point Drive, Bal Harbor Drive, Los Olas Boulevard, Surfside Drive, Bayvue Boulevard and Causeway Drive.
Due to damage under the pavement, Spencer had to replace the concrete under the streets and the curbs before finishing with an asphalt overlay.
Pogorzelski said a large portion of the additional cost came from the need to raise the streets to reach driveways to more than 100 homes.
The extra street repair costs for Bayshore come a year after Arnold paid an additional $403,807.50, for a total of $1,389,817.13, to complete 14 street projects last year that included a similar road replacement project in the Southern Aire subdivision. In 2024, streets collapsed during the project, and a dump truck and Rock Community Fire Protection District truck became stuck in the road.
Streets in the Southern Aire subdivision include Alice Drive, Jere Lane, Jere Court, Georgia Drive, Diane Drive, Deborah Drive and Ellen Drive. Arnold also had to have the concrete under those streets replaced before finishing with the asphalt overlay.
The city planned for the full street replacement in Bayshore before work began this year because the Public Water Supply District 1 of Jefferson County replaced water lines in that subdivision in 2024, and that work showed the concrete under the asphalt road had deteriorated.
Ward 2 Councilman Brian McAruther, whose ward includes the Bayshore neighborhood, said while he does not like approving additional costs for street work, the Bayshore and Southern Aire projects merited the additional expense.
“We had no idea how bad Southern Aire was,” he said. “There was no indication that we knew when we got the big trucks over there that they were going to fall through. You can’t see the under base through the pavement. Bayshore was kind of the same way. They really didn’t know completely what they were getting into. We assumed because luckily the water district had gone in and warned us. If the water district hadn’t gone in, we probably would have had another Southern Aire incident because we would not have known what that subbase was.”
Because the work in Southern Aire and Bayshore was so extensive, he expects those streets will not need major repairs for a long time, Pogorzelski said.
“These are not band-aid approaches,” he said. “These are as close as you can get to permanent fixes. I feel confident that in Southern Aire and Bayshore, we will not have to do any major road work for probably decades.”
Pogorzelski said the city will pay for the Bayshore, Haag Road and rec center projects with part of its portion of Jefferson County’s 1/2-cent sales tax for road and bridge projects. The county keeps the bulk of the money from the tax to use throughout unincorporated Jefferson County and then distributes the rest to cities based on population and road miles in those cities.
Interim City Administrator Bill Lehmann, who also is the finance director, told the council that Arnold currently has a balance of about $7.2 million from the county road and bridge sales tax.