A local company was awarded a $178,623 contract to resurface a portion of W. Burdick St. later this year and there’s a possibility that approximately 65 percent of the cost could be covered by state and county funds.

Last week, the Oxford Village Council voted 5-0 to award the job to Birmingham Sealcoat, Inc., which is based on Metamora Rd. in Oxford Township.

The project will involve removing the top 2 inches of W. Burdick St. between Ashley Way and M-24, then replacing it with 2 inches of new asphalt.

“It’s only about a three-or-four-day project,” said village Manager Joseph Madore.

“Part of the reasoning behind doing this street now is to have it ready for the M-24 project (in 2020),” said village President Joe Frost.

Frost explained the village wants “local streets” to be in “better shape” because they will be handling additional traffic while M-24 is under construction between Goldengate St. in Orion Township and Harriet St. in Oxford Township, just north of the village. The work is expected to run from March through November next year.

Six bids were submitted for the W. Burdick St. project and Birmingham Sealcoat was the lowest. The others were Florence Cement Co. ($203,226), James P. Contracting, Inc. ($204,306), Hutch Paving, Inc. ($212,567), Eastern Asphalt Company, Inc. ($214,482) and F. Allied Construction Company, Inc. ($223,945).

Project Engineer Doug Skylis, of Rowe Professional Services Company, said he checked with three references and all of them “spoke very highly” of Birmingham Sealcoat.

“They indicated that Birmingham Sealcoat, Inc. does high quality work, stays on schedule and shows up on time with the right size crew and equipment to get the project done,” Skylis wrote in a Feb. 21 memo to the village.

To help pay for the W. Burdick St. resurfacing, council voted 5-0 that same night to approve a resolution supporting the village’s application for $88,623 in grant funding through the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) from the Transportation Economic Development Fund Category B Program.

Right now, the plan is to do the road work sometime between July 1 and Aug. 2, but if grant funding is secured, Madore said “that may (change) our schedule here and there,” pushing things back.

The village has already secured funds from Oakland County for the project. Oxford has $16,754 banked from the county Board of Commissioners’ Local Road Improvement Program (LRIP) for the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years. If the same allocation formula from prior years is used for 2019, Oxford would receive an additional $10,251.

Created in 2016, LRIP is a discretionary program that provides limited financial assistance to villages and cities for repairs and improvements on roads under their jurisdiction, not the county’s. LRIP allows communities to bank up to three years worth of funding from the county.

Madore explained that LRIP funds must be used on roads that “help facilitate bringing people into your community.”

“It couldn’t just be like a  . . . neighborhood road,” he said.

W. Burdick St. brings drivers directly into downtown Oxford.