De Soto residents can expect to see road work begin around the city this month.
The De Soto City Council voted 4-0 Aug. 18 to hire Spencer Contracting Co. of Arnold to complete the asphalt overlay work, which will cost an estimated $300,000, city officials said.
“Every year around this time we go out to bid for our annual asphalt overlay,” City Manager Todd Melkus told the City Council. “This year we have 10 streets included in the project. Most of those streets actually have had a water main project on them as well. There’s a lot of streets in town that we would like to overlay, but we like to work on the infrastructure underneath before we do that overlay (so) we don’t have to cut the street up to fix anything down the road.”
The roads include North Seventh Street from Jefferson Street to Fletcher Street; Fletcher Street from North Sixth Street to North Seventh Street; the Flucom Bridge; South Fifth Street from Lake Street to Kingston Street; South Fourth Street from College Street to Kingston Street; South Third Street from College Street to Kingston Street; Kingston Street from South Second Street to South Fifth Street; Lake Street from South Second Street to Plum Street; and South Second Alley from Kingston Street to the dead end and St. Louis Street to the dead end.
Melkus said like the year before, only one company responded to the request for bids for the road work. Spencer Contracting submitted a bid for $110 per ton of asphalt.
“These companies – just a lot of them – don’t bid any smaller jobs anymore, even though we are looking at potentially a $300,000 job,” Melkus said. “Leadbelt used to bid a lot. Jokerst used to, as well, but they’ve gotten busy with other projects. Spencer has done a great job for us in the past, so we’re glad they did bid and it was $5 under what we estimated per ton.”
Melkus said the city estimates that 2,549 tons of asphalt will be needed for the project.
“Which would be $280,390 and an additional $24,000 for milling, so (the asphalt project would be) just a little over $300,000,” Melkus said.
Melkus said on Monday that he hopes the asphalting will begin in late September because a few of the streets, like Lake and Kingston, still need some waterline work.
North Second Street house to be demolished
Also at the Aug. 18 meeting, the council voted 4-0 to pay Herzog Excavating and Demolition LLC of Bloomsdale $16,450 to demolish a dangerous building at 506 N. Second St.
“This was the property that we deemed dangerous months ago on a show-cause hearing,” Melkus said.
The house was damaged by fire on Jan. 16, and it had been abandoned for some time before the fire, city officials said.
Due to the damage, the flooring couldn’t be inspected for asbestos, Melkus said.
“During demolition, they literally are going to have to stop and test the product in the middle of demolition,” he said. “Of course, you can imagine that probably scared off a lot of contractors from wanting to mess with it. If you’re not used to dealing with DNF and asbestos, you’re not going to bid on it.”
Melkus said the house is close to a neighboring house, which also makes the project more complicated.
“It’s not going to be an easy (job),” Melkus said. “But I thought it was a very fair bid.”
The city also received just one bid for the demolition project.
He said the city used Herzog for several projects in the past.
On Monday, he said the demolition work should begin in the next few weeks.
Council member Todd Mahn was absent from the meeting.