Monday, September 16, 2024
The construction project on Factory Street is moving forward despite a few issues along the way.
At a Manawa City Council meeting on Aug. 19, Public Works Director Josh Smith said the street construction project had fallen behind.
A July 29 letter informed residents of Factory Street that they would not be able to use their driveways for 10 days.
As of the Aug. 19 meeting, the residents are still unable to get into their driveways.
The notification was dispersed in the doors of residents on the first block of Second Street, however, Smith said the rest of the residents found the notification on a stake at the end of their driveway.
Smith said he made copies of the letter and delivered it to each house to make people aware of what would to be happening moving forward.
The main focus of Smith’s report involved the concrete contractor who Smith said decided to start excavating without the appropriate Digger’s Hotline permitting, which led to them hitting two gas services in a row.
Outside of the miscommunications with the concrete contractors, the large amount of rain has also slowed progress on the project, Smith said.
Smith said there is wording in the contract that if they are behind a certain amount of days that money is deducted from the final bill.
“That’s what I’m thinking that at some point I know that these contracts have deadlines and if they don’t meet them, it costs some, it’s financial,” Third Ward council member Jim Roenz said. “Why should we pay, you know? Right, they’re not meeting their end.”
Smith said he emailed Cedar Corporation hoping to push the general contractor, Murray Concrete and Construction (MCC), and their subcontractors to get things moving and back on track with timeframes.
“These are just normal headaches that go with construction projects, the thing everyone needs to keep in mind is these projects are happening because these streets were to a point where something needed to happen before they got much worse and price of materials needed to do the work increased any higher,” Smith said.
Smith said since he sent the email to Cedar Corporation things have started moving forward and he hopes residents will be back in their driveways this week.
