Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
OXFORD — Over the past several months, the Village of Oxford has been preparing for one of its larger projects, the resurfacing of the Village Hall parking lot.
Originally, the project was expected to be completed in three phases, however, during its meeting on Nov. 14, the council approved a change that would allow village Manager Joe Madore to bid out the project as a single-phase project. The change was approved 4-0. Councilmember Lori Bourgeau was absent from the meeting.
The three-phase project, which would have been done over the course of three years starting in 2024, was set to come in at just under $800,000. In switching to a single-phase project, the village would save an estimated $73,000, said Madore.
“Tere (Onica, village clerk/treasurer) and I were talking afterward and she was asking about our fund balances and if we have to put this off, so we started looking into it more. We think we could bite it off in one chunk because we have the money,” said Madore. “I started looking into where the savings are and where we can find savings.”
Madore also expects that having a larger project will attract more bidders and could potentially save the village even more than expected.
“I think it would be better for us to disrupt the situation here. If we were just doing Hudson (Street), that’s not disrupting the operations here – the police (department) and the people coming to our building. But then phase two, of course, would be the other part and that gets more disruptive and then phase three, around the building. But, doing one major interruption, it might drag it out a little longer but I think we’ll have a better project and save the money,” Madore said.
Parking has continued to be an issue in the southwest quadrant of the downtown, which is also a big draw to having the project completed as soon as possible, council members said.
The village offices currently also house the Oxford Village Police and its vehicles as well as some equipment from the Polly Ann Trail, which created the extent of the concern with doing the project in one phase. However, Madore thinks it will all work out just fine.
“There will be some pain in the project like most projects but doing it all at once, I think it will be better and save us some money,” Madore said.
Madore is unsure of how long exactly the project would take but anticipates it taking at least 30 days. He is expected to bring forward a more accurate timeline of the project at an upcoming meeting.
While the council did not need to approve the change at the meeting, approving it would allow for the village engineers (ROWE) to begin planning for the project as a whole, and allow them to provide more information at the next council meeting scheduled on Dec. 12.